[OLPC-Philippines] Notes from OLE Nepal

[Marife Mago]

Thanks Mel and Rabi...this is a great information for all who are formally
setting up grassroots initiatives...we'll definitely include this in
eKindling.org ....blogs and can we post this to OLPC wiki as  grassroots
information ?

Cheers,
~mafe



On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 11:09 PM, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:

> We've discussed learning from other deployments and asking them about
> the models they've employed - so here are notes from a conversation with
> OLE Nepal's Rabi Karmacharya over falafel the other day. Rabi, hopefully
> I haven't mangled things too badly. ;) Comments and suggestions welcome.
> (Words in parentheses are mine.)
>
> I'd like to publish these in a better forum than the archives of a
> mailing list. Any suggestions? (Rabi, is any of this useful for the OLE
> Learning Guide?)
>
> --Mel
>
> ----
>
> The most important thing is a good team. We have strong players here:
> people who have been in the classroom, people who understand how to
> build and run organizations, people with the ability to create and
> support technologies with open-source development processes, people who
> can quietly move around and keep us together as a community that listens
> and learns from each other. And all of us are dedicated towards
> improving education in the Philippines. So we already have the biggest
> thing settled.
>
> We do need to have a legal entity to give us existence in the eyes of
> the Filipino government, donors, and the like. (Having an organization
> should not be a way to exclude contributors or apportion power - it is
> so we have these structures to serve the the contributor community at
> the heart of what we do, the people on the ground who Get Things Done.
> And that community of volunteers needs to be as open and inclusive as
> possible.)
>
> As a legal entity, we are required to have a board of directors. Rabi
> suggested that we have a board of directors, a management team, and an
> advisory board.
>
> The board of directors is a legal requirement. These people are:
>
> * Givers of advice
> * Filipino
> * Legally liable for the organization
> * Do not draw salary
> * Not involved in day-to-day operations
> * Deliberately chosen to span a wide range of professions - law,
> banking, medicine, government, education, engineering, anything else we
> might imagine needing advice on.
> * Respected people who give the organization credibility and help
> promote the project, as they have access to people we will typically not
> have access to.
>
> The management team is the team involved in daily operations. These are
> professionals in their field working for the organization in their
> professional capacity. They are the core execution body and the ultimate
> decision-makers (when the community cannot reach consensus). The
> management team reports to the Board of Directors.
>
> The advisory board is similar to the Board of Directors, except:
>
> * They have no legal liability
> * They do not make decisions
>
> ...and thus have less of a time commitment than members of the Board of
> Directors. A distribution across professions is less important; this
> board should have pepole who have been in the education field, former
> government officials, etc. They can also be international figures,
> unlike members of the Board of Directors who must be Filipino. Their
> role is to provide the management team with advice, so they are
> resources for the management team to draw upon but the management team
> does not report to them.
>
> There are several things we should be considering at this point (as we
> continue to move our projects forward):
>
> * (How do we decide upon - appoint, elect, or invite - the management
> team and the two boards?)
> * How do we keep a low-key PR presence to allow us to focus on our work,
> yet document well and publicly enough that the right people get credit
> for the right work, and what we do is visible to others who would like
> to learn to do the same?
> * What is our exit strategy - what goal(s) are we aiming to hit at what
> time(s)?
>
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>
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