Ассоциация прогрессивных коммуникаций: глобальная сеть на службе гражданского общества.

Association for Progressive Communications

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is an international network of organizations that was founded in 1990 to provide communication infrastructure, including Internet based applications, to groups and individuals who work for peace, human rights, protection of the environment, and sustainability. Pioneering the use of ICTs for civil society, especially in developing countries, APC were often the first providers of Internet in their member countries. APC is a worldwide network of social activists who use the internet to make the world a better place. APC is both a network and an organisation. APC members are groups working in their own countries to advance the same mission as APC. APC has more than 59 members, mostly in Asia, Africa and Latina America, from five continents. This is a challenge and a strength, because members are at the two extremes of internet development (members in South Korea with incredible connectivity and members in rural Nigeria where they have to power computers using car batteries and solar power) and in between.

Collaboration between APC and the United Nations began in 1992, in preparation for the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), more popularly known as the Earth Summit. As APC had the only international, civil society communications network in existence at that time, the UNCED secretariat published their information in APC conferences. They had no other way of distributing information so economically and so effectively. (The UN itself began distributing information by electronic means many years later). Email links are set up between Cuba and APC networks. They call the Cuban servers three times a day to deliver and collect email. The cooperation continues over the years. APC received consultative status to the UN with the several quadrennial reports submitted over the years. APC also cooperated with United Nations Development Programme. APC actively participate in UN initiatives such as Millennium Development Goals. The studies of violence against women and ICTs in ten countries and how legislation or lack of it hinders or helps women were conducted and published as a part of promoting gender equality and empowering women. The APC Women's Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP) co coordinated a women's network to bring an NGO perspective to the UN Beijing +5 review. Official declarations promote ICT as a way of enhancing NGO participation in global media policy making. It also gives recommendations for women's portrayal, decision making and advocacy in media industry.

APC made a significant impact in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean by providing civil society organisations with email and e information using the Fidonet gateways. Fidonet protocol was used because it is store and forward technology enabling people to compose and read email offline which is very important in the countries with the pour infrastructure (phone lines, electrical supply and hardware). APC's African networks faced with the strong competition from commercial providers, held an Africa Strategy Development Meeting from February 8–11, 1997 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The meeting attended 34 APC members and partner networks from all over Africa. The program areas, action framework and plan as well as women's program were discussed. A powerful statement from the meeting was published as The Holy Family Communiqué from African Electronic Communicators. A legal threat to freedom of information online came from the company Biwater and involved APC member LabourNet, April 1997. Thirteen APC members mirrored the threatened content.

2000 was a turning point for APC. The new vision statement drafted at an APC council meeting held in Piriapolis, Uruguay hosted by the Third World Institute (ITeM): "APC works to achieve a world in which all people have easy, equal and affordable access to the creative potential of the internet to improve their lives and create more democratic and egalitarian societies.". In May 2001, APC and partners started work on building a portal which collects training materials related to ICT for social change. This portal, named Itrain Online, is an entry point for finding the best computer training resources on the web for the social change and development. The first APC Internet Rights Charter was published in three languages: English, French and Spanish. The themes: internet access for all, freedom of expression and association, access to knowledge, shared learning and creation, privacy, governance and rights were addressed. APC started Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) in 2002. This project was launched to provide small grants for the agricultural initiatives by women. The access to new information and communication technologies affected rural men and women and improved agricultural production. The ICT policy handbook for beginners was published in 2003 together with a tri lingual ICT policy training for civil society curriculum which includes a special section on advocacy for positive policy change. APC stimulated multi stakeholder dialogue as part of the Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA) programme, and trained 100 technology enthusiasts in Africa to set up community wireless networks.

Take Back The Tech!, a 16 days of activism against gender based violence (25 Nov 10 Dec), started in 2006. This campaign engages information and communication technology in helping end gender based violence. APC joined Internet Governance Forum for the first time in 2008. A statement to IGF open consultations was submitted before the third IGF supporting regional IGF meetings and giving suggestions about themes and content of the meeting in Hyderabad. The first edition of Global Information Society Watch was published, focused on citizen participation in ICT policy processes in the wake of the World Summit on the Information Society. These reports are accessible yearly and are a joint initiative with the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation Hivos. The other activities included replication of the community wireless training developed in Africa in Latin America and the Caribbean, forming an eighteen country network connecting indigenous communities, rural backwaters and impulsing university networking courses, the first Feminist Tech Exchange, training people from 680 organisations in technology for social change and ICT policy from 2004 2008, organizing a press conference in Tunisia to address the host government's suppression of free speech in the wake of the second World Summit on the Information Society, launching GenderIT. org.

The Gender Evaluation Methodology is an evaluation methodology that integrates a gender analysis into evaluations of initiatives that use information and communications technologies (ICTs) for social change. It is an evaluation tool for determining whether ICTs are really improving or worsening women’s lives and gender relations, as well as for promoting positive change at the individual, institutional, community and broader social levels. It was first developed in 2002 and was tried and tested by thirty community based organisations. Since then hundreds of people have become involved in GEM's development including people who developed the tool, who train in how to use GEM, who are adapting GEM to increase its applicability to rural ICT4D projects, telecentres, software localisation and ICT policy advocacy and who are now offering GEM evaluations on a consultancy basis. The GEM manual was written in English and has been translated into French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Arabic). GEM was developed by the APC Women's Rights Programme (APC WRP

ActionApps offer a low cost solution for content sharing that both increases the functionality of not for profit and NGO websites, and facilitates the creation of portals sites so as to improve the visibility of civil society information. They are driven by free software. ActionApps were first developed by APC and released to the free and open source software community. Development continues strongly in South America.

APC is awarding Chris Nicol free/libre open source software award (FLOSS or FOSS). The criteria and 2014 and 2007 winners are published.

Beginning at 10.15 BST on Thursday 1 August 2013 GreenNet, and consequently APC, suffered an extensive DDoS attack. The attack was later described as a "DNS reflection attack" also known as a spoofed attack Several sources linked the attack to the Zimbabwe Elections, held a day earlier. GreenNet's services were not fully operational again until 10.30 BST on Thursday 7 August. On the 9th of August there was a second attack, which, while affecting some systems, allowed GreenNet to discover the site which was being targeted. In October 2013, the target was revealed to be the site of British investigative reporter Andrew Jennings.