Recently, under CROPP, LACRALO (a group of people from the Latin American and Caribbean region who participate in organizations that work for Internet end users) carried out activities in three different countries of the region: Bolivia, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
CROPP is a Community Regional Outreach Pilot Program that is intended to provide support on outreach tasks and recruitment of new members, while looking for ways to achieve a more global and regionally diverse membership base.
Together with Sylvia Herlein, we presented the workshops that were focused on the role of the Internet users in those three countries.
Bolivia. Nearly 80 people attended the University of San Simon (Universidad Mayor de San Simón), in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, where the workshop took place between May 6-9, which was promoted and organized by the Engineer Society of Bolivia (Sociedad de Ingenieros de Bolivia) and the Scientific International Academy (Academia Internacional de Científica). During the workshop, presenters explained the necessary requirements an organization must meet in order to become a certified ALS (At-Large structure) within ICANN and several specific questions were asked to create new organizations that will later submit their applications to become a certified ALS. An "At-Large" structure refers to the independent Internet user community that participates in ICANN's policy development work.
Haiti. On June 4 we headed to Puerto Príncipe, Haiti, for the next workshop, which provided Spanish-French simultaneous interpretation services and was attended by 65 participants. Several attendees expressed the importance of this event in regards to knowing more about ICANN and how to become a part of the organization. We came to the conclusion that it was crucial to have a native presenter for the next activities, which would be held in Haiti, since, even though interpretation services were provided, it would be easier to maintain informal communications with participants after the event as well.
Dominican Republic. Finally, on June 5 and 6 the third workshop took place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, at the headquarters of the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra, with the support of the Taiguey Foundation (Fundación Taiguey), ISOC.do (being created), the NIC.DO Domain Administration (Administración de Dominios NIC.DO) and the Dominican Telecommunication Institute (Instituto Dominicano de las Telecomunicaciones). The contents of this workshop were similar to the ones prepared for the event in Haiti, and many companies, government agencies and ISPs participated.
The ICANN Staff had previously prepared brochures in both Spanish and English, which included information about ICANN and its At-Large structure, and these were handed out to the attendees during the workshops.
We invite all those who are interested in receiving more information about these experiences to read the activity report for each of these countries, which are available in the following link: https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=48344572