|
Launch of Tibet Online |
|
| Committee of 100 for Tibet |
President Dan Haig has brought a new project, Tibet Online, to the Committee of 100 for Tibet. Tibet Online is a network of computer resources for Tibet that has grown out of Dan's 1996 creation of http://www.tibet.org, a central resource Web site for the international communities that support Tibet.
For over three years, Tibet Online has been providing free Internet assistance to members of the global Tibetan and Tibet Support communities. More and more, those groups are turning to Internet technology as a means of creating a unified international movement. Until now, the work has involved creating and maintaining a number of the major Tibet-related Web sites and email lists, as well as providing Internet consulting services for the Tibetan community at large.
In 1997, Dan and group of computer professionals traveled to Dharamsala, India to expand an Internet connection established by the Canada Tibet Committee into an Internet network for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile. They carried the contents of a Local Area Network in their backpacks from the US to India, ran wires throughout the very low-tech compounds, installed network hubs in every department of the government, and trained Tibetans to wire His Holiness' office.
In the Fall of 1998, the ever-increasing demand for services led Dan to propose to the Committee of 100 Board a major expansion of the existing Tibet Online Project. The goal was to establish a computer resource and job training center in the San Francisco Bay Area. This facility will allow us to expand our current Internet services to the Tibetan community, as well as introduce a new program - free computer skills training to local Tibetans - to fight the chronic underemployment of Tibetans in exile.
New Board Member Yolanda O'Bannon was hired in March of 1999 as Managing Director of the project, and has been working from the new C100/Tibet Online office in Berkeley, instituting a fundraising campaign to raise the $100,000 needed to establish the center.
In March, we received a generous donation from the ALZA Corporation of six Hewlett Packard Pentium computers with monitors and two HP laser printers. Earlier this month, we moved these computers into a new combined office space and interim computer center, in Room 309 of the 2288 Fulton Street office building, which is equipped with a fast Internet access (DSL) line.
We are now focussing on fundraising, networking the computers, establishing our DSL Internet service, and acquiring the software training programs and licensing we need to begin to provide open lab hours in this space. We hope to open the center for informal use during the summer and will initiate the more structured computer classes as soon as funding permits.
More information is available at the Tibet Online Web site, at http://www.tibet.org. (Click on the "About Tibet Online" link on the home page.) We welcome visitors to the Berkeley office, and inquiries via phone: 510.848.6554, or email: Tibet100@tibet.org.
[Summer 1999 Newsletter Home Page * Tibet Online * Committee of 100 for Tibet]