Ned is really a different from lots of other places where people are discussing things. Sometimes where people are expressing their opinions, emotions can run pretty hot. Sometimes passionate arguments are a great way to focus on what we really think. The problem is that online forums where the conversation is always hot tend to burn themselves out.

When I first encountered the points here I didn't know what to make about them. Many people have strong opinions about the right way to use points, and the way I use them probably isn't considered the right way. When I'm moved by something someone has said, I try to give points. Points don't mean I necessarily agree with everything said, but are a way for me to say and remember that I think what was said is important.

Even without giving points there are people here who give me feedback that in some way I'm important to them. Everyone needs to be reminded that they are significant. And perhaps there is no truer reminder to oneself than to recognize and appreciate others how others are significant to you.

People here at Ned are very passionate and opinionated. I think that points and personal appreciations are part of what keeps the discussions true and burning rather than becoming so hot they burn up.

Have courage to say what you think. Take courage that sometimes the way you think will be changed by others. Many more people read than write, so you may not always be aware how many your words reach. And you may not always be aware how many people hold you in high esteem. No matter what, if you speak truthfully from your heart, there will always be people here who will love you and support you in your efforts. We all want to make a good world and we can only do that together.

Have courage to say what you think. Take courage that sometimes the way you think will be changed by others. Many more people read than write, so you may not always be aware how many your words reach. And you may not always be aware how many people hold you in high esteem. No matter what, if you speak truthfully from your heart, there will always be people here who will love you and support you in your efforts. We all want to make a good world and we can only do that together.

Beautiful John. Your statement really describes what goes on here at <ned>. Thanks for saying it so well.

Thanks allot evvy for this disscussion, i hope with this many will open up thier minds and make most members fill free. the most difficult things is that most of the members though we have read but our education backgroundthe foudation of school has been very poor,and English languages and writing skills sometimes even reading is problem, another problem is the computor knowlge.is really big problems resently,a research was carried out and and was found that only 2%of people living northern uganda can access computors.and out of the 2% only 0.8% can use properly use computor,so as we centre gulu we are trying.we had prosal on having more computor ofr training only.and then enrolled some of the schools drop out and trained them in computor training,and also have those who are working trianed too.hope with time we shall have this, with the members majority can not read and write,so the few we have on line really needs help,i can see with the last week trainig click4 africa , people areconcerating, put and hope we shall learn and have thing on line. Another thing we were used to the culture of confidencallty,were thing are only directed to one or two,but here everthing is open so makes some people fear.but its being overcome trough practice. The line reporting is also geting new to many members so i hope yu bear with us. this are some few problems i notice. we also do not give our self time to sit on computor for long due to some circumstance.which you cannot run awy form.examples you are to look for survival too.hence u end up not doing much on line. Thanks.

[Deleted by author on 07 Feb 2008 21:36 PST: Double postage]

Hi George, your comment is good and am facing almost the problem here, but the only way to over these is by giving some time to the computer, remember computer is good teacher and am now marreid to computer, also try give them tips on offline thing alongside online because some members dont know yet what a window is, mouse, floppy,microsoft word, execl. try open for them microsoft word to help correct spellings and gramar. what I have discovered is that there is no single place or a person to give all about computer... it is amatter of time, trying and asking "according to CJ lia founder"

Thankyou Evvy for bringing such a crucial discussion. I have been on ned for sometimes and following all the discussions going on, but not very sure whether Iam also entitled to contribute.Now I know I can do so freely.

As Goerge has mentioned, English may be a problem for some people, but I have also found the people on ned to be very humble and understanding people. This therefore means everyone should feel free to express their opinion just with whatever little English they know.I believe it will be understood.

George, Lucy and Peter, thank you for your comments and for giving all of us some insight into the challenges you all are facing.

I personally understand. When I lived in Kampala my job was to work with groups of volunteers to teach them the computer and to start the very first Click4Africa program. The challenges you speak of like fear of the computer, reading and writing in English, and having the time to sit on the computer are the very same challenges we faced then.

I will make some comments on each of these and I hope that others will follow suit and that somehow we can work through these challenges together. I will make my comments below in idividual posts because I have found that shorter posts are easier for my African friends to manage.

First of all I want to say that all of you at both centers amaze me! I only speak one language (English) so I can only imagine the difficulties you face.

I remember one young man that I worked with in Kampala. He and I had a long talk one day about just this very thing. He told me that even though he could speak and read in English, he THOUGHT in Luganda. So when he read something on the net he had to translate it in his mind to Luganda to understand what he read and then he had to translate his thoughts back to English to be able to write an answer. This quite often took a long time. I had never thought of it in that way. Do you realize how amazing you all are?

But the good news was that the more he did it, the easier it became. So I am encouraging all of you to keep at it. I want to hear what you say even if it is only a few words. What you have to say is important to me and to the people here on <ned>. We all feel so privileged to be able to share with you. There is no judgement here. We don't care if your English is not the best or if you use a word wrong. We just want to get to know you.

And here is a tip:

After you read something that interests you sometimes you won't know exactly what to say even though you want to participate. So ASK A QUESTION. This lets the author know that you are interested and want to learn more, it will help you to earn points for participating, and it will help you in using your English skills.

Learning the computer is not easy for anyone. I remember when I was learning the computer (and that was not that long ago) I was terrified and so confused. I watched others just whiz through things and I didn't think that I would ever learn. But I kept at it and I did learn and so will all of you.

Ask questions, someone will know the answer. We all had to learn at one time and we will all be happy to help. The person sitting next to you may know the answer you need so ask them. And always remember that the only stupid question is the one you did not ask. Asking questions is how we learn.

When I worked with the volunteers before, I helped to design a lot of How To instructions. Things like how to open a word document, how to save your work, how to successfully search on the internet and many more topics. I would send out the instructions by email and then the volunteers always had them in a folder in their email so that when they got stuck on how to do something, they could just go to their email and read the instructions. (the very first instruction was how to use folders to organize your email)

Perhaps we need to do this again. I am happy to help. Send me a list of topics you would like simple step by step instructions for and I will work on it.

As for time, well I think that is the universal challenge. You notice, I used the word challenge instead of problem. I look at all of these things as just challenges to be overcome.

We all struggle with finding the time to do all that we need to do. That has nothing to do with what country you live in, what job you have or whether you speak English well or not. That is just a fact of life.

I have learned to accept this fact and to do the best I can. If that means that I can only spend a short time on the computer then I try and make the time worth while and I try and be happy and proud of what I DID DO and not worry so much about WHAT I DIDN'T HAVE TIME FOR. The trick for me is to prioritize.

I am a list person and I make a list of all the things I need to do. I put the most important things first and as I do them I cross them off the list. This keeps me focused on the tasks and it feels good to cross things off the list. It makes me feel like I am accomplishing something.

I know that all of you at both centers have a lot of things to do. Not the least of which is to earn a living. That is understandably the most important. But it is also important to try and schedule a little time for Click4Africa. This program is designed to help everyone. So, if you can only give a few hours a week, a few days, or a little time each day just make sure that you make the most of the time you have. Somehow it will be enough and we will all be appreciative of what you do.

I might suggest that if you need instructions written for some simple tasks (or even more difficult tasks) you might first look to see if there are people in the community who know how to do the task and ask THEM to write the instructions. I have always found that teaching someone how to do something helps you understand it better. Plus (as I know first hand learning Thai right now) It will be a good exercise to help improve your English skills. It is very ordered straight forward English that is used in instructions.

Just a suggestion!

Thank you for the suggestion and it is indeed a good one. You are very correct about it being good practice for anyone's English skills.

Huge thank for your inspiration! trully I may also call it challenges which every human go through in one way or the other. my challenge may not be yours but the most important is sharing those challenges. like countries are gifted by different natural resources, still they depend on one another as long as they have interest in each other

As for my case am very happy to see what we are doing here on ned has made me feel free in a way that i have come to the point of learning some things that i had not known and am still learning more.

At first i used to ask my self how am i going to start? What will people say about what i have participated in? At last i had to stop fearing and got courage to step in. So the first thing we have to put aside is fear because the only way for the big number of community membres to here your voice and to know you is on Ned. Here in Kampala Kireka we have people like Christina, Grace, Peter,Ezra they have been good example and encouragent to me plus th rest.. So if we have such people around us i know many people will have the courage to step in and start participating.

Thanks everybody for all your participation on Ned . My main challenge is always seeing almost everything that I would like to post, already posted by someone else this then gives me a lactance for fear of repeatation , now and again I try to look round for new words to use and may end up getting non and one other thing which I think is a challenge to everyone of us here , is the punctuation . Sometimes I feel I do not know any punctuation at all that sometimes give me hard time joining any discussion.

But all in all as lucy had mentioned before that people here are great and do not really mind about our English , am sure it's also the same with the real punctuation and may take sometime for us before we knew what excatly to do, however this should not be any cause for alarm because practice makes perfect , only lets be more often on line to learn all the tips.

i would like to wellcome linda idea.of geting us instructions.

This is motivational!

Thanks Evvy for coming up with this.Thank you all.

I think the main challenge that I find around is when you are in middle of a discussion,then out of the blues ,someone comes up with ` another` discussion and puts it squarely on the one that your interest was in.This in a way puts a comma in your participation.However,I love Ned cause you have the power to shift the discussion back on track.

This is really encouraging that there is someone always interested in whatever u say. For me it has not been aesy to follow up on a particular discussion due to some particular reasons....Am still in need to know how to navigate the site and enjoy the full benefit of the network.

George Ovola said:

i would like to wellcome linda idea.of geting us instructions.

Look here. Does that help?

wonderful linda, wisdom is the brain behind knowledge . no one is hundred percent the best, but through instructions, commitment,hard working and correction is the only answers.

Thanks, Evvy for starting this discussion.

I, too, was quite intimidated to post on O.Net/Ned since ALL of the conversations are so well researched, intelligent, passionate, and simply brilliant.

What I found helped me was finding small ways to help someone out. Cynthia was looking for help with her PlayAtlanta KaBoom grant, I passed along the info to my nieces in Atlanta. Click4Africa is another great way to make a difference through small actions. Sometimes just offering encouraging words can be a great way to get the ball rolling.

There are so many motivated, inspired individuals here on Ned, but they all need support in some form - and I hope that's a role I can help with.

Dear Linda I am one of the new member and I have given you 2 positive feedback toward your coments about our photos and am really happy and I think other members will be more happy their photos.

Allison Coyne Carroll said:

Thanks, Evvy for starting this discussion.

I, too, was quite intimidated to post on O.Net/Ned since ALL of the conversations are so well researched, intelligent, passionate, and simply brilliant.

What I found helped me was finding small ways to help someone out. Cynthia was looking for help with her PlayAtlanta KaBoom grant, I passed along the info to my nieces in Atlanta. Click4Africa is another great way to make a difference through small actions. Sometimes just offering encouraging words can be a great way to get the ball rolling.

There are so many motivated, inspired individuals here on Ned, but they all need support in some form - and I hope that's a role I can help with.

HI Allison,

I recognize your name and its nice to know that others feel the same way as we all do. Your help is most appreciated. You are absolutely right. No matter how motivated or inspired individuals are, they still need support and encouragement from others. Its just the human side of us. We all sometimes get so busy doing out 'thing' that we forget that.

The human side of us is so wonderful. When Allison told me about PlayAtlanta, I didn't know Allison or a thing about KaBoom or PlayAtlanta. Of course I followed the link and found out about PlayAtlanta and the others competing for the grant. It was fun. It also told me something about Allison, so I felt like I got to know here a bit better.

All of us have strengths and something to offer each other. It takes time to get to know what's what about someone and it's nice that happens with easy interactions here. Often you don't know at first that what someone has to offer you is what you need. Then later you realize. For example I've been thinking recently how important singing is for community and in another thread Allison linked to an article that really helped to bring together my thoughts.

We can be a great blessing to each other. Well of course we can also be a curse. The first is the important part and what we all are trying for. It's good to remember that all of us can bestow a gift--a gift of our humanness.

Evvy Bryning said:

When I first joined Onet, I didn't make a comment for a long time. I thought I wasn't smart enough to participate with these really fantastic people in their discussions. I thought no one would be interested in what I had to say.

How fantasitc of Evvy to have created this thread! I have felt the same way as well. Ned members are so welcoming and encouraging I could not help by respond. It is a lovely feeling, this feeling of connectedness. I am a regular but infrequent participant.

I hesitate to introduce a negative here where so many have shared only positive feelings about their interactions. I am frustrated that I am not always able to recognize when participants want to discuss theory and when they actually want to take action to improve a situation. Perhaps I am not selecting the right discussions to participate in? I also worry that I am killing threads and am now hesitant to contribute at all. So now I wonder, is it me or was it something I said?