# Dana/julian (colnodo) and Dinesh/shalini (janastu)

joint proposal attempt

Anthillhacks for regional collaboration

Dear Julian,

Post dWebCamp, we had some discussions with the fellow APC fellows.
It feels like the right time (after COVID lockdown) to engage in inter-CN
activities and do residency style CN exchanges and capacity building work.
This is also a way to know each other and refine our models of CN
practices together.

We have been doing annual Anthillhacks events since 2015 and I have applied for
APC member grant of USD 5k
https://www.apc.org/en/grants-research-and-campaign-support-2022-call-open-all-apc-organisational-members

If we do a joint one, we can go up to 12.5k.

I am suggesting that Dana and another person from Colnodo or your
collective visit us, spend a month at COWMesh area and we build our
activities together as a joint work.
We can use 4k for air tickets and rest for related work and all.

I am assuming that Colnodo does not already have this grant - if you
do, then you do not qualify for the joint proposal. Also, I can help
draft the joint proposal with some inputs from you and Dana so as to
reduce the delay this sudden work may mean to you all.

looking forward,
best wishes,
-dinesh

ps: In addition, we maybe have Hiure and tania as residents (keeping
fingers crossed)
here is what i have for the proposal now
----------------------------------------------------------

B1 - Brief project description:
Anthillhacks started in 2015. http://j.mp/myhill captures the spirit
of the event. COWMesh - our Community Network was set up and it was
already an invitation for creative people in the region to come
together and to be introduced to the possibilities of a CN
(open.janastu.org/projects/cowmesh). Since then it has attempted to be
an annual event which opens up the possibilities and the potential of
being in a location. anthillhacks.in is the reference website. Last
year we used the MEFT budget to help organise the event in a locally
distributed manner where each node in the mesh became a session hub -
with this we were able to include the village community in a holistic
way (at last). It also was just after COVID lockdown and we had to
restrict the number of people at each session hub! After the last
dWebCamp event where we physically met our fellow CN and dWeb people,
it has become clear that Anthillhacks now can emulate parts of it and
become capacity building event for region communities who are aspiring
to set up wifi-mesh and be fellow local CNs. During the last
Anthillhacks, our thought was the 1. there need not be a large number
of people and especially that participants do not indulge in large
numbers of local community. 2. that the community (some of the mesh
nodes) can have their own sessions like cooking and local performances
whereby they are not sidelined in the main event with regional
participants. We now intend to formalise the event a bit with this
support in enabling regional capacity building and research CN
practices and chart future pathways. This worked reasonably and we
think this model has a good future not only in scheduling the event
and cross node participation but also in bringing regional community
network aspirants to come together and 1. participate in capacity
building activity and 2. experiment with local offline apps and
services so as to "take home" the mesh building capacity to their
communities.

B2 - Project duration (estimate)
From: Saturday, October 1, 2022 to Saturday, December 31, 2022

1. What is the objective of this project?:

We have been conversing with other APC members after the dWebCamp
event and we are excited about the possibilities that we can look
forward to during out next annual Anthillhacks event in December 2022.
Objective of this project is to collaborate with others in the region
and co-work with other APC friends to make strides in capacity
building in the region - learning from others who are across the world
in other CNs. There has been a growing interest in COWMesh in other
remote regions and indigenous communities. We intend to do two
specific activities during this event. 1. We invite 3 other groups who
are within India who are excited about emulating COWMesh and 2. We
also hope to emulate work done at other APC CNs across the world so as
to use the models of engagement that have worked when it comes to
gender and environment as priority areas.

2. Who is going to be impacted by this project?:

1st set of impact will be the community women as we intend to follow
work of Nodes that Bond
[https://communitynetworks.group/t/community-network-webinars-and-events/180/49
and https://portalsemporteiras.github.io/en/nos-por-nos/] in Mexico
and South America. We would like to also bring to attention of our
communities and use methods used in our sister projects (COwHKi)
(https://www.apc.org/en/exploring-potential-community-owned-health-knowledge-infrastructure-cowhki-enhance-community-health)
of ownership and negotiating in spaces with a history of privileges.
Likely under the banner "Who Decides Who Decides"? Our COWMesh
community is 1. our campus of down to earth structures and team spaces
working on building and provisioning the mesh network and services,
also to other regions in india, 2 the community of 4 villages with a
number of idiosyncrasies from farmers with small land holding to
villages which are traditionally dalit who we engage on various level
including Feminist Technology Playground activity, and 3 with a
village on the hill with a large number of tourists to visit the
temples and to experience the historic and structures and heritage
stories. Our guests will be from other indigenous regions and together
we will be working on engaging with and developing processes that help
engage in activities related to resource mapping and who decides who
decides exercises with and for women.

-o-o-o-