JH-01 has been invited onto an amazing project (which must remain un-named) with some amazing people (who must also remain un-named for the moment) which will be engaging with the community and people of Yeoville in Johannesburg.
The suburb of Yeoville (located alongside the notorious Hillbrow) has changed radically over the past 20 years and is now home to large African foreign national communties (Congolese, Nigerian, Malian, etc) and many new black SA'n residents to this part of Johannesburg. It is a deeply troubled space at the level of culture, security, civil rights, health...you name it. But it's also modern Africa at its most intense and vibrant and for many who have moved there it is a place of opportunity - the reason they came to South Africa.
And what do you know? Again we find a proliferation of Internet Cafes (over 30) in again, a space of 10 or so city blocks. JH-01's involvement is to research the communities use of the cafes, their patterns of use and the kinds of things they need more broadly to function better in this community, Johannesburg and South Africa. We are then going to design a user experience for a website that will be available in the Internet Cafes to help improve their quality of life.
It's an amazing project and we think of it as bottom up e-government and it will hopefully help us on our way to a future objective: to be building better city and country websites.
