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An Update From Jhai
Foundaton Press
Contacts: Earl
Mardle Dear friends, I wanted to give you a brief update on the Jhai PC and communication system. There is also new and thorough information, including a powerpoint show, at www.jhai.org/jhai_remoteIT.htm .
We are pursuing the design of a website that will allow end-users and their implementing organizations (initially) to communicate among themselves with the help of translation services, seamlessly and securely . This website will quickly be open to people seeking to implement low power IT solutions of any kind as well. It will work for people with Pentium One or equivalent computers or better. It will link to site(s) where people are networking, especially in an open design way, on low power and alternative power engineering solutions and inventions for technological innovations. At the moment I find this site useful and it might be linked to on our new site (still, as I said, in the design stage): http://www.peswiki.com By the way, the Fair Trade people are coming to certify the Jhai Coffee Farmers Cooperative's coffee this month according to the last report from them. The coffee is so good! It is for sale through Thanksgiving Coffee http://www.thanksgivingcoffee.com/ and our website at http://www.jhaicoffee.com/ We've had a pretty good year, I think. I know we have worked very hard and we have very good relationships, now, on all continents. I think this is going to be the make-or-break year for Jhai. I am confident we will be able to help local folks solve their computing and communication problems in a sustainable way. I expect we will set up a virtual consulting firm that makes sense for end-users, computer companies, and funding agencies. I believe this work will garner worldwide support and publicity, especially since we will be doing all this on an open source, open design basis. I am eager for any feedback you might give us and any advice you have for us. I hope you see fit to fund us and help us. Donations can be given through our website http://www.jhai.org/ or through the address below. Every little bit helps. If you are a funding agency that has been waiting us to 'show you the money' ... here we are. If you would like to partner with us, please be patience and I will get back to every one of you. If you are press, please send your inquiries to our coordinators, Jesse Thorn at splangy@splangy.com and Earl Mardle at earl@techempower.net or to me. We appreciate your help very much. My goal is to give this gift to Navajo families before my 62nd birthday on June 22. We expect to begin the next implementation, a beta, by the end of the year, God willing I feel like I'm under orders from Sgt. Friday of the old Dragnet TV series who used to say: 'just the facts, sir'. This is not exactly my usual way of doing things. I have worked with lower income communities, now, for 35 years. One thing I know: nobody, except religious hermits, likes to be poor ...and I am not certain that hermits like it either. At the same time, just about everybody believes in and feels a need to keep their traditions. What we are offering through this, now, three year exercise are:
What we do is respectful and grounded work with grounded people using cutting edge technology. Jane Ellice Hopkins once said, "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains." Well, I’m pretty sure we are not geniuses (Lee Felsenstein excepted), but I can tell you this process to date has involved at least a million details and has been very painful at times. We've done our best, that we know, ... and we are here, now, thanks to you. Please join us as you can, ... through cooperation and through gifts of time and money. yours, in Peace, Lee Thorn |