Josh Weiss: Networking The Poor in Guatemala with Partners In Solidarity

I recently had the opportunity to talk to Josh Weiss, who works with Partners in Solidarity. Partners in Solidarity was founded by Matthew Rutman with the vision of bringing computers and technical education to the rural schools and NGO's of the Guatemalan state of Quetzaltenango. The project facilitates the donation of computers, supplied by Next Step Recycling in Eugene, Oregon, to allow for the implementation of laboratories. In partnership with Guatemalan NGO INEPAS, Partners in Solidarity provides sustainable development within the communities of Quetzaltenango, through the dual means of encouraging both computer literacy and community organizing. Josh Weiss, a consultant and technology worker from California, is currently living in Quetzaltenango and working as a volunteer for Partners in Solidarity.

A computer lab built by Partners in Solidarity

JMZ: Can you describe the current state of Guatemala?

JW: I see Guatemala as still reeling from the socioeconomic effects of its 30-plus year Civil War. The Guatemalan Civil War was fought for a variety of reasons, including significantly: a more equitable distribution of land, educating the rural, poor and indigenous, increasing access to health care, encouraging democratic participation and the defeat of the 500 year old patronage farming system. When the civil war ended in 1996, a series of peace accords were signed by the government which promised to address these issues. As the government has been slow in fulfilling its promises, many local and international NGOs have formed to take up the work that addressed in the accords, i.e. building schools, clinics, water treatment centers, monitoring elections, etc. In the Guatemalan Highlands, this includes, for example, the work done by ourselves, Cafe Conciencia and Enlace Quiche. Enlace is a local NGO, funded by USAID, which creates a digital curriculum for teaching Mayan culture and language, as well as training Rural people in technical skills. Incidentally, we use the software created by Enlace on our computers to teach the Kiche language and culture, the predominant indigenous culture in the Quetzaltenango area.

Unloading a Shipment of Recycled Computers from Next Step Recycling in Oregon

JMZ: Do you think the current government regime is stable?

JW: This is a bit of a loaded question. The government IS Stable in the sense that there have been three "democratic elections" since the peace accords were signed, and that all the winners were non military figures. However, what they're doing to better the life of the people we work with, I can't say. There are currently countless problems in the county. Violence is incredibly prevalent: 12 bus drivers were recently murdered in one week by gangs in the capitol, there are lynchings, 26 police officers were kidnapped in the Atlantic port of Puerto Barrios the other day. Malnutrition is high. People are *very* poor. I couldn't believe my eyes last week when I did a school visit. 30 minutes off the main highway to the Pacific Coast, down a dirt road, to a community in the middle of a coffee plantation. I've never seen anything like it and I don't think the kids had ever seen a computer. So id say its "stable-ish".

JMZ: how does your organizations approach differ from others?

JW: I've learned a lot about sustainable development through my work. Basically we function like this: we tell teachers in our department (state) that we have a computer lab project. If they want to participate, they submit a formal application to the organization INEPAS. When INEPAS gets a proposal, they preform a study of the community to make sure that basic necessities, ie nutrition and sanitation, are available within the community. If the community is a good fit for the project, we send along a list of requirements for project participation. If the study shows these factors are lacking, we choose not to work in that community to encourage development in the proper order. Some of the requirements are: building the lab, putting bars on the windows, putting in electricity, having both a security and a maintenance committee, and having a curriculum. Once they do all that, they're requested to contribute 75 Q (About $10) per computer to help with project costs. These costs include the rental for our parts bodega, tech services, curriculum development, container transport and other costs. The contribution is an important part of creating sustainability as it it helps the communities take ownership of the computers. The parents really care, all those committees are volunteer, and let me tell you, seeing a group of twenty or so rural indigenous Mayans who have made the journey to Xela to meet with us and discuss the lab, all discussing their commitment to the lab project for their school (on a work day) is really something. Blows me away every time.

JMZ: so most of the rural Mayans see it as a path to college education?

JW: well, that's about 10 steps ahead I think. It really serves two dual purposes. One is the obvious, introducing kids to computation and the concepts of computers. Whether that's so they can write papers, use the Internet, play games, or find work in the future and yes, it's like literacy tests for voting in the U.S. Black South, they need to know computation to get to university, so at the least it removes that obstacle. University attendance is very rare among our schools, just because it's very expensive, maybe the first born son goes, but all school after elementary costs money, and costs are not only school costs but the transportation costs to get to school, which are really high, especially given the current cost of gas ,which is reflected in bus costs. Purpose two is getting the kids and the parents interested in and proud of their schools, which is huge. There was a Tulane university study done on the effects of our project, which demonstrated that that parents leave their kids in school longer, because they value an education that includes technology. Further, we install software which teaches art, geography, history and indigenous culture, which thoroughly augments the regularly available curricula. These effects are why INEPAS got involved. They developed our sustainable concepts, and administrate the selection of schools.

JMZ: do any of the rural Mayans use the net for business or even political goals? - I'm talking about usage aside from just preparing to become something other than a rural Mayan.

Josh Weiss speaking to a group of Guatemalans

JW: I'd say overwhelmingly, no. There's some interest from some potential donors to train them to use the Internet to sell products as part of getting them online. Mostly what happens now is ONGs in the cities use the internet to sell products FOR the rural population, as Cafe Conciencia above. It's a huge cultural shift (at least in my interpretation) to get people using the internet in that way and certainly one that would be great.

JMZ: coffee is the major export in G. ?

JW: Actually, the number 1 and number 2 income sources for Guatemala respectively are tourism and remittance payments from Guatemalans working abroad. After that, coffee is a large export along with some handicrafts

JMZ: How long has this project been operating?

JW: The project started as an independent organization 6 years ago in 2002. In 2003, the second year of the project, INEPAS got involved, beginning the community involvement aspect of the project. Its now a great partnership between ourselves, Next Step, INEPAS and a local org called Entremundos that provides office, storage and teaching space. As of last year, 2007, we became the official International Computer Placement Program of Next Step Recycling. The involvement of the social organization INEPAS in the Partners in Solidarity project is an important one. They began the sustainable aspects of our project, and will eventually be taking it over to leave it in Guatemalan hands. For them, the project serves not only to build community interest in schools, but to teach the communities about community decision-making and organizing (through the election and organization of committes). Thus, the project serves to teach more than just technology.

JMZ: Any last words regarding your experience in Guatemala? there's a river near XeJW: Its beautiful down here, but in some ways is also pretty shocking. For one example, my mom was here visiting recently, and she noticed things I've stopped noticingla that is literally the town dump for a small rural community. As my mom was looking on in horror, a little kid walked up, smiled right at my mom, and threw a huge bag of garbage in the river, smiled again, and walked away. Its beautiful, shocking, exciting, scary. Shocking and scary because of the story I've just related, and the pervasive top-down cultural and environmental ignorance which allows situations like this to persist. Beautiful, however due to the capacity for change. Just after this story took place, I learned of (and am participating in as a helper and DJ) a festival being put on to clean up this river and raise money to put a garbage collection system in place in Zunil (the town from which the river gets its name).

JMZ: Thanks Josh!



There are many ways to help Partners in Solidarity. For more information on monetary or equipment donations, as well volunteering in Guatemala, please write to Matthew Rutman (psolidarity -at- yahoo.com).

• INEPAS, which is also a really great Spanish School offering 1-on-1 intensive Spanish courses in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

• Next Step Recycling, which provides all computers to Partners in Solidarity, among many other great projects.

• Entremundos, which provides Partners in Solidarity with storage and classroom space, as well as maintaining a database of volunteer opportunities throughout Guatemala.

American Healthcare and All You Can Eat Buffet

Healthcare is an issue on everyone's mind these days. Our politicians are talking about it, Americans are complaining about it, Non-Americans are ridiculing it, large overweight media personalities are creating funny documentaries about it. It suffices to say that Healthcare is a topic on everyone's mind.



The issue is in how Healthcare should be managed. The ones who are on the spot, the supposed Healthcare experts generally admit there is a problem. Then you've got the sick and wounded masses who are complaining there isn't enough, that services are inadequate, that profits grossly outweigh deliverables, and that other systems are thriving while ours is dying. While spending an afternoon helping a friend get the doctors, I thought of a good analogy. Americans love a buffet!

So on one end of the spectrum you have public healthcare. These are the systems found in Canada and many parts of Europe. On the other end you have private healthcare providers. America is generally run this way, although private practices have generally died out in the last 50 years. So we have something in between, what I will call The Healthcare Buffet.

In the Healthcare Buffet, you pay one price and take all you want. American's cannot pass a deal like that up, its just too too sweet! But this is not only what Americans value, it is what they are blind to. What is the experience of a buffet like? The food is usually un-nutricious, but perhaps tasty on a very superficial level, the kind of food that makes you want to eat more and more. But you're never satisfied. Finally you stop gorging yourself when your so full you think you're going to keel over. Wow what a great deal.

You look around the buffet dining hall at the other people at the buffet. They are all overweight, the kind of people who never think about what they are putting down their gullet- they are just concerned with how much they can stuff down their throats. They are foolish careless people who are destroying their own digestive systems in the name of eating. This is the type of person that a Buffet attracts.

Meanwhile you consider your other lunch options. There was the fancy gourmet place, you hear the food is good but prices are high. Then there was the company cafeteria, food is terrible but you don't have to pay at all! Hmm... what a dilemma.

This is our Healthcare dilemma. We currently have a buffet. A buffet that attracts the most irresponsible people whose only desire is to consume as much as possible. As supplies run low, the product gets 'greasier' and cheaper. Pretty soon its not a lunch at all, its just a big stomach ache. Much of the problem lies in the problems Americans have with dealing with the sick. It is considered to be unethical to treat a sick person differently than a healthy person. Its a good ethical principle, but its not a good economic principle. It breeds a lack of responsibility. Those who pay in are either clueless healthy young people who haven't discovered any other options (like our lunchgoer above) or unhealthy people who have lost their health due to either misfortune or , even more likely, abuse.




We need to breed the type of Healthcare consumer who is responsible for their own health. Not people who use thousands of dollars in diabetes medication and then drink a gallon of Coca-Cola. Not people who smoke their entire lives and then get lung cancer. Not the type of people who call the ambulance when they stub their toe.

We do want people who are interested in preserving their health, because it is the kind of commodity that is much harder to buy back once you've sold it.

In We We Trust: The Prospect Of Local Currencies

An area that has always absolutely fascinated me is Local Currencies. Local Currencies are alternative currencies not necessarily backed by an official national government. Other terms for Local Currencies are LETS, Community Currency, Alternative Currencies, Barter Currencies, and many more. Their use is far more popular in Europe, Canada, and Australia- although there have been a number of communities here in the US who have adopted their own local monetary system, often with resounding success.

photo by by T.W. Collins

So How Does It Work?

Often people do not understand the theoretical basis of what money is. Money is simply a medium of exchange- a way to keep score amongst a group of people as various actors participate in a society in some way. Credits and Debits are made by members of a society based on their own personal criteria- they can give and take, request and spend the money as they see fit. It is important though that the money retain a level of worth to users- so in order to do this a variety of things must be employed. For one it must be relatively scarce- if I ran off endless units then there would be no value to them. Another it must be reliable- it cannot be easily forged. Yet another is liquidity- it must be easy to use, for instance if US dollars weighed 40 pounds it may pose a liquidity problem because it would be a huge chore to drag it to the marketplace to spend. So that sounds simple enough, so why is money so darned complex?

Credit: a great innovation

Money gets complex when we introduce the concept of credit. Credit is only possible in money systems where the unit of exchange does not carry a high intrinsic value. So gold pieces have a high intrinsic value, dollar bills do not (they have the same relative intrinsic value as a greeting card). So the issuer of the money (given it does not have a high intrinsic value) has an enormous power- the power to create more money and give that money to whomever they see fit. In some cases this is seen as a great advantage, because I can privilege certain parties instantly without any inhibitors whatsoever. Our modern banking system issues enormous measures of credit to various parties on a regular basis, and many people in our own country do not understand the position of privilege that these banks are in due to this special right. In this system there are haves and have-nots, all determined by fiat decree of these money masters to whom we entrust our most important medium of exchange, the US dollar. It may interest the reader that these people are (generally) not even elected by the people, they are a collection of appointees and stand-in figures from wealthy families, etc. Many, including congressman Ron Paul contend that this entire system is a farce and has been from its inception, and absolutely needs to be rooted out for our country to regain its social and economic health.

photo by Jessica Shannon

The Solution: Local Currencies

So in recognition of the problem of credit and banking and the threat it poses to open societies, many people have made suggestions to counter the effects cited above. Reinstating the gold standard is one (in other words, every dollar in circulation is exchangeable for a specific amount of gold, thus running off new money is impossible without acquiring more gold, and this acts to reduce the ability to generate credit). Another, more compelling solution is the local or community currency. In this schema, a community with common values prints their own currency or script (or in some cases implements a purely virtual schema) in limited supply. At this point they can do a number of things. They can lend them to people. They can grant them to people. It is these kind of decisions that determine the nature of the currency and the values that it represents. This is the tricky business of monetary management, if done correctly a robust medium of exchange is created and through participation and cooperation of community members, more value is created than was there initially. Remember money is a medium, it brings people together. It creates equity and cooperation. The problem doesn't lie in these principles, it is the corruption and intermediation of the money supply that is the source of problems. So a local currency stands as a possible alternatives to the corruption we have seen so much of lately in the news. Perhaps it is our only choice for the future.

A great video: "The Money Masters"...





This article has been featured in Digital Gold Currency Magazine : Community Currency Issue.

Local Currencies are a subject worth of shelves of books. But this article is a start. Here are some good links if you re interested in this subject:

The E.F. Schumacher Society

Ithaca Hours: An Early Local Currency used in Upstate NY

Yootles: A Virtual Currency System From Yahoo!

LETS: Local Exchange Trading Systems

AZ's own Gabrielle Giffords votes to increase foreign work visas

A lot of my readers are in Arizona, I thought I would do a small and brief feature of yet another chapter in the bankrupting of America's technology workers. From CIO magazine:

The Innovation Employment Act, introduced by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, late Thursday, would increase the cap in H-1B visas from 65,000 a year to 130,000 a year. In addition, there would be no cap on H-1B applications for foreign graduate students attending U.S. colleges and studying science, technology and related fields. Currently, there's a 20,000-a-year cap on visas for graduate students in all fields.

Bill Would Double Cap on H-1B Visas

Gabrielle, how exactly is this bill serving your consituents? I note that her web site does not include any press releases concerning this bill's introduction at the time of writing. There was this item, that shows she discussed the matter several months ago, but her site tends to concentrate on more important matters like press photos and cheerleading solar energy.

Topicle: still doesn't get it.

So it seems we've got a blip at Topicle.com on today's tech PR circuit. Topicle.com is a kind of meta-search engine that allows people to assemble links to their sites and create specialized 'vertical' search engines for particular topics. For instance someone (most likely a paid employee of Topicle.com) created a search engine for Real Estate that includes a bunch of links to reportedly reputable site concerning real estate. It could be said that Topicle addresses the problems outlined in my last post: Rise Of The Linkmeisters, in that it is supposedly less susceptible to outright SEO manipulation.

But Topicle still thrives under the aegis of the collaborative Web 2.0 thesis. As I sat staring at the Topicle homepage one thought came to the fore: Why on earth would I want to spend my time assembling links for some 'vertical search engine' given that those links are public information? I could think of a few reasons:

1) I am working in this industry vertical and I want only my links to show up in a search, so... I just pick out my links and register them as the Official Search Engine of Industry Vertical X. Welcome back to the Linkmeister SEOfest.

2) I like to play around with web sites that look cool. LOL!!!!1!!

3) I'm a kid and this is a great opportunity to look important and help to put my individual POV skew on the universe.

Who did you leave out of this equation Topicle.com? The people who matter: people who are trying to create reputable and valuable sources of information- and require recompense to do so. Because your rule is that my hard earned link collection is instant public property, you rob me of all my return on my hard earned work, and you implicitly prohibit the development of a search engine vertical that actually provides some level of information that's useful. These kind of sites are creating a culture of non-accountability and zero value. If this kind of thinking proliferates, we will certainly have a web not worth surfing.

graffiti is cool. but not very informative.
(photo by Gary Taylor)

Topicle: No thanks- I'll go play with YouTube.com instead. Create a policy where I can have some damn privacy, maybe I'll come back. In the meantime I'll steer clear of Anon's Awesome Vertical Search Engine.

Topicle.com link

The Rise Of The Linkmeisters : A look at the culture of SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization and its partners in crime; SEM ( Search Engine Marketing ), etc. Are those disciplines dedicated to the art of manipulating and coercing search engines to do the bidding of paying clients. SEO was more or less an outpost of traditional marketing disciplines and is typically populated and run by 'non-technical' types. SEO never really appealed much to the technical crowd, primarily because technical people are far less enthusiastic about the prospect of a search engine being a fully-qualified source of information on a topic. So somewhere between web development and marketing lies the magical land of Search Engine Optimization. If you run a website or work in the realm of Internet development you have doubtlessly run into a 'SEO professional'. They are typically very shady and unsavory characters, statistically more so than web developers!

(photo by Antonio Manfredonio)

The discipline of SEO relies on a grab-bag of tricks and techniques and is usually divided into two areas: Black Hat and White Hat. Black hat is SEO using techniques considered nefarious, obnoxious, exploitative and the like. Google doesn't take kindly to Black Hat SEO. White Hat SEO generally plays by the rules, albiet intelligently but not altogether kindly (after all marketing is a kind of war to gain relevance). Something to keep in mind is that SEO is not a difficult or complex process, and many SEO companies totally oversell their services.

I'm not going to cover various SEO techniques here, but what I am going to consider are the broad trends. Google is the #1 thing to consider in SEO as Google gets an enormous share of search engine queries. There are a variety of things to consider as Google's engine is complex and ever evolving. 'Page Rank' is Google's way of rating the quality of your site as an information source and this rank is determined by a number of factors (mainly external links to your site from other highly ranked sources). Understanding these factors, their history and their likely evolution is the job of the Linkmeister.

As the SEO services world grows, Google will become less reliable. So in a sense, Google and the SEO world have an antagonistic relationship. Google generally doesn't acknowledge the SEO world primarily because it nullifies their entire value proposition: that the search engine is a dependable and secure source of information. Most SEO people will contest that what they do is not exploitative at all- but the fact is their role in the process of web promotion is to unnaturally distort and otherwise affect how a search engine would operate naturally. Google is constantly working to stay one step ahead of this group.

Personally, I think the world of the Linkmeisters is going to turn over drastically in coming years- its seems the world is being overrun by a particular species of SEO Expert who suffers from tunnel vision and at night dreams of high Page Rank and maximum page impressions. The real numbers behind these services show high traffic but low overall sales (which is the unspoken goal here). What must be considered is the quality of the traffic. Sure you suckered the user into clicking on your site... but are they interested in what you have to offer? People are trusting the search engine less and less- and looking to alternative sources for their information- they are moving to more personal and accountable sources of information- like JoshuaZeidner.com.

Lets face it, the experience of using the web is like having your eyeballs grabbed and pulled right out of your eye sockets and nailed to the computer screen. And the SEOs are to blame, and most likely Google agrees with me. So in that sense, Google will employ a steady program of downgrading any web source that is susceptible to SEO activity. So I'm going short on the SEOs for the time being. There are some areas that do show promise however, perhaps you may catch a glimpse of these areas in coming articles. Stay tuned dear reader!

Great Video re. Net Neutrality, must watch!

a very provocative and poignant video about a very serious issue affecting us all: Net Neutrality. If the telcos get their way, you won't be reading great blogs like JoshuaZeidner.com anymore. They would put you on a strict diet of Gigaom.com for the rest of your life. And that would be a serious tragedy. I caught this video virus from Isen.com.



sorry folks, looks like that video link broke for some reason. it's fixed now.