Grants/Access to Knowledge and Alternatives to Copyright in El Salvador
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
This project aims to be a previous step to the Creative Commons (CC) Licenses porting process in El Salvador. In order to start the localization process, first is needed to sensitize civil organizations and government entities about the importance of balancing copyright and Access to Knowledge as a public policy to enhance higher standards in education, culture and technology. Free software and CC Licenses, as alternatives to copyright, facilitate and enable these development objectives. For this reason it is important to spread the understanding of its benefits. This project also looks up to generate an alliance of institutions interested to lead the porting process of CC Licenses.
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).
1. An investigation paper about Access to Knowledge and Alternatives to Copyright in El Salvador. 2. A Policy Brief of the same topic addressed to government officials. 3. An information website, to be the main diffusion tool to society about the topics related to Access to Knowledge and Alternatives to copyright. It will be also used to publicize the project and its activities. 4. A project profile addressed to look for funding in order to start the porting process of CC Licenses in El Salvador.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
The project targets to two types of stakeholders. In one hand, government officials in the areas of education, culture and technology; who will benefit through sensitizing and capacity-building activities that will enable them to foster public policies in favor of Access to Knowledge. In the other hand, the project targets also to civil society entities, such as libraries, universities, investigation centers, artists’ organizations, technology professionals’ organizations and free software community. They will benefit by learning about alternatives to share and access to educational, creative or technological contents. They will also strength their capabilities to organize and articulate common efforts in favor of knowledge and culture sharing.br />
FUNDE is a non profit organization with a 17-year experience in proposing public policies consistent with sustainable development. For this reason it is recognized by government agencies and public opinion as a national referent in development topics. It is also well-known by its ability to gather wide sectors of the organized civil society and run discussion and capacity-building spaces. Since 2006 FUNDE has proposed alternatives for the implementation of DR-CAFTA’s compromises, especially in Intellectual Property Rights subject.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
After the project’s divulgation phase, we will sustain bilateral meetings with the institutions that participated, in order to measure their degree of interest and receptivity. This will be able to be done through a systematization of the interviews and communications made. Concerning to public officials, we want them to recognize the importance of favoring the balance between copyright and access to knowledge, and the fostering of alternatives to share creative and technological contents. In the other hand, with regard to civil society actors, we aim to contribute to the conformation of a community of entities linked to education, culture and technology around access to knowledge and sharing practices through the use of copyright alternatives . This will be evident in the number of institutions compromised with the elaboration of the project profile addressed to fund the porting process of CC Licenses.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
We expect to involve approximately 20 public officials of the national government and of the regional organism for the integration of Central America (SICA) in this project. Also, we aim to reach at least 25 representatives of civil society entities related to education, culture and technology areas, such as libraries, universities, investigation centers, artists’ organizations, technology professionals’ organizations and free software community.
The participants' involvement will be sought and sustained through bilateral meetings, before and after the divulgation activities of the project, and the implementation of a mechanism of permanent communication.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
This project will take this message directly to decision makers: the application of alternatives to copyright, such as Creative Commons Licenses and Free-software, is a key issue for El Salvador; this will foster creativity, education, culture and technology’s development. The message will also be given to the civil society entities, which are going to benefit by the acquisition of new capacities that enables them to maximize the potential of the culture and knowledge they manage.
Salvadoran society will be benefit too, by having a website that will offer information about the importance of access to knowledge, copyright and its alternatives.
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?
For the development of the website a Free-software will be used. Beyond that, there are no technical requirements relevant to this project. The skills and expertise that are going to be brought to the project, in addition to techniques in computing, are research, coordination, sensitization of stakeholders and formulation of projects.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
There is the possibility that some public officials will show lack of interest and commitment with the topic addressed. In case that insisting doesn’t work, the action to take is to set contact with a lower-level official so he or she can take the message to the superior.
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?
In order to continuing the efforts to deepen the knowledge about copyright and its alternatives in the stakeholders and to start the porting process of CC Licenses in El Salvador, one of this project’s outputs is a Project Profile and a strategy to search for funding. This output will be done with the involvement and collaboration of the institutions interested to participate in the process.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
Due to DR-CAFTA all Central American countries and Dominican Republic have a standardized copyright’s regime. Additionally all countries face the same challenges in the areas of education, culture and technology. This gives the opportunity to implement similar projects to promote the use of alternatives to copyright in Central-American countries, especially in those that haven’t ported CC Licenses yet.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
We expect to be supported by Creative Commons with the free granting of the hosting fees so we can reduce the costs of the web-site development. As well, we would like to be assisted technically during the process of the Project Profile formulation.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Our organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners through public events, network meetings, bilateral meetings, contact via e-mail and telephone, also has a website (www.funde.org) and soon we will implement communication through mailing lists.
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