Co-founder Taking It Global Addresses IICD-event on Digital Natives
Jan 22 2010, Netherlands [NL]
- Source:
- Hilde Eugelink [heugelink(at)iicd.org]
- Country:
- Netherlands [NL]
- Sector:
More than 250 people gathered in Amsterdam on January 15 for the seventh edition of the ICT4D event ‘Fill the Gap’ to discuss digital natives and development. The keynote speaker was co-founder and executive director of Taking IT Global, Jennifer Corriero. The event generated many ideas about how youth in the Global South could use and improve their ICT skills and how youth could be mobilised to use these ICT-skills for development.
Archetypes of youth change makers
After the event was opened by IICD’s managing director Caroline Figuères, keynote speaker Jennifer Corriero took the stage. Her organisation, Taking IT Global , provides youth with a platform and online tools that help them raise awareness and money for good causes. Corriero inspired her audience by sharing her research on archetypes of youth change makers and how they can be supported. Corriero said that “offering opportunities for established leaders to mentor and share their skills is absolutely critical.”
Open Source Discussions
Corriero’s speech was a great warm-up for the open space sessions that followed. In open space, the participants decide the agenda. Topics included “how digital natives are active in politics”, “how can youth use play to find out their own way of using ICT” and “how can creative energy of youth in the north be channelled on social networks for development purposes.” Jeroen Bottema, professor at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences attended the event and posted some videos about the open space on his (Dutch) blog. In his blog he also states that “a lot of results came from the sessions and the results […] were of high quality.”
From digital natives to ‘digital dinosaurs’
There was a huge variety of participants. Some were digital natives themselves, others were –as one of the participants jokingly called them – ‘digital dinosaurs.’ People attending Fill the Gap were mainly from the Netherlands, but there were also participants from other parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa. The day inspired many of them. In a video impression of Fill the Gap, Chris Vleugels, student of the “Vrije Universiteit” in Brussels, gives a good summary of the day. “I liked Jennifer Corriero’s speech about how to support youth in their ideas by using ICT and the sessions were creative and provided a lot of ideas to write down. So it was a very useful day for me.”
Fill the Gap
Fill the Gap is an annual network and debate event about ICT and sustainable development organised by IICD, Hivos and Oneworld.nl. The event was an outcome of the organising parties’ involvement in the UN-conference on the information society in 2003 and 2005. This year Fill the Gap focused on engaging digital natives in development. Digital natives are people born after 1980 who grew up in the digital era. At the event this topic came back in many ways.