OT: Nonprofits Review Technology Failures

[meng]

Hi

I came across the above article, Nonprofits Review Technology Failures, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/technology/17fail.html?_r=1&hp

Except:
"WASHINGTON — At a gathering last month over drinks and finger food, a specialist at the World Bank related the story of how female weavers in a remote Amazonian region of Guyana had against all odds built themselves a thriving global online business selling intricately woven hammocks for $1,000 apiece.

The state phone company had donated a communications center that helped the women find buyers around the world, selling to places like the British Museum. Within short order, though, their husbands pulled the plug, worried that their wives’ sudden increase in income was a threat to the traditional male domination in their society.

Technology’s potential to bring about social good is widely extolled, but its failures, until now, have rarely been discussed by nonprofits who deploy it. The experience in Guyana might never have come to light without FailFaire, a recurring party whose participants revel in revealing technology’s shortcomings.

“We are taking technology embedded with our values and our culture and embedding it in the developing world, which has very different values and cultures,” Soren Gigler, the World Bank specialist, told those at the FailFaire event here in July."

I'm curious, how many of you have come across this, "tech, nonprofits and failures", both in Canada and elsewhere?

Regards

Meng
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