Grants/Cacao, Commons’ Central American Observatory
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
Cacao beans were highly appreciated by the Mayas in Mesoamerica (Southern Mexico and Central America). It had several uses, one of them was as currency and therefore it represents trade and exchange.
Cacao Commons’, Central American Observatory, seeks to register the licenses of Creative Commons in the use of information in Central America, It will emphasis in Guatemala and Costa Rica because they are the, countries with the highest Internet usage and where the CC chapters are growing the most in the region.
Twelve posts of critic analysis written by different Central American writers about publishers, written media, audiovisual projects, cultural magazine and educative material of their countries will be published. Two monthly texts will be published in the web site of the project and in magazines of the region, mainly in Guatemala. After the 12 posts have been published, they will be compiled in an electronic edition in the website of the project that will be under a CC license.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
Twelve posts of critic analysis of 8 thousand characters (with space) each. Two monthly publications during 6 months, two public debates about the handling of information and the use of CC licenses in the region..
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
Guatemala and Costa Rica are the two countries with significant penetration of Internet in its population (10.8% and 35% respectively in 2009 according to ODAI). Notwithstanding, the use of CC licenses has grown in these two countries (Guatemala has a local chapter and Costa Rica will launch one soon), there is not enough information about Creative Commons licenses and therefore people aren’t aware of advantages for the owners, the users and the community itself, and the use of CC licenses taking into consideration success cases. The project will contribute with a descriptive study of how CC licenses are being used in the region and mainly a deep consideration about the handling information in specific communities.br />
Libros Mínimos is a Central American publisher, who first used and promoted the CC Licenses for literature in the whole Central American region. It has many alliances with other Central American publishers and is programming with them the expansion of the project for it to be widely known. The presence of Libros Mínimos in the region allows to have direct contact with users and likely projects. The coordinator of the project Cacao is a Guatemalan writer and journalist who has published poetry, chronicles and articles in different media in the region under CC licenses.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
The method to measure the results are going to be the visit statistics, comments, and alternative contents generated. On the larger communities (each country) the growth of users of CC licenses and its diffusion during the project will give parameters of the impact of the project.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
Libros Mínimos has a talented writers team that have a wide group of readers. Some of the writers will participate writing the chronicles and others as bloggers. The research of projects under CC licenses will able to contact with other writers in Guatemala and Costa Rica who will be able to join project Cacao to continue this reflection of contents under CC licenses.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
The use of CC licenses has grown in Central America without its promotion in spaces of reflection and discussion about copyright, handling information, communitarian journalism, culture, etc. The absence of reflection has made the Creative Commons movement be unnoticed during its boom. The CC mission will find an answer of its users with their thoughts, reflections and questions through the space that Cacao project will develop.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
The project is based on a wordpress platform. It tries to generate analysis about handling information. The technical skills are administration and management of information. The project will generate a space for critic analysis in the use of Information Technology in Central America. The technical needs are a domain, hosting and a wordpress template.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
The biggest challenge for Cacaco will be the capacity to supervise the information that will be generated under CC licenses in the Central American Region. Because of the rapidness of the growth we will to focus on the generation of reflection, analysis, criticism and study on the handling of information and copytights.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
Through the initial support of Creative Commons, Cacao would be able to look for grants in different Institutions that support media analysis, communitarian journalism, transparency and freedom of expression in Central America.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
Today there aren’t critical analysis spaces of digital contents in the Central American region. Analyze information through an independent point of view generates discussion and exchange of opinions between the analyst and who generates the information that is being analyzed. Cacao tries to be a reference of analysis and critics in the commons community. A good quality analysis and a debate generates an scalable impact.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
The success of Cacao is in the support of Creative Commons Institution and its philosophy. The resources that CC could provide is hosting, financing, diffusion and translation.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Our organization communicates through social networks like facebook, blogging (many writers are bloggers), microblogging (twitter) and email.
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