Open Connect- Kenya Platform
A platform that will ensure no open contributor and user is left behind when shaping Open landscape in Kenya
Hello there! Welcome!
We are thrilled that you are visiting Open Connect Kenya repo!
This README file is to help you understand some of the project’s information. Please read along and we invite you to be part of this journey
Why this project?
The Problem
- Over the years, socioeconomic and political divides in the society has created gap within social movements all over the world. Kenya is not an exception
- Open enthusiasts in Kenya, Africa are working in isolation meaning the disconnect between open contributors and users is inevitable in the future.
So, we are doing this to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself with the open movement in Kenya. Not having one strong voice whether we like it or not will negatively influence or continue influencing the progress of everyone within Open landscape.
The Solution
The Open Connect- Kenya will:
- Create a webpage with Open Resources with a link to a chat room
- Launch Gitter chat room where Open Contributors and Users will be sharing with each other
- Initiate mentorship program among open contributors and users who have joined the chat room
By launching these platforms, everyone will be able to interact with each other and the Open resources. Furthermore, development within Open landscape will be changing as years progresses. Therefore, having mentorship program is a way of building the capacity of the contributors and users in shaping policies within it due to the ever changing concepts.
About Us
Lilian Juma is the founder of Open Connect- Kenya Platform as Open Life Sciences 2020 project lead. Development of this platform is made possible due to mentorship provided for by OLS mentor, Caleb Kibet.
Caleb is a 2019/2020 Mozilla Fellow and a Bioinformatician, interested in teaching, open science, reproducibility, machine learning, FAIR Genomics, and community building.
Lilian is an OpenCon alumni who has hosted three OpenCon satellite conferences in Kenya and Algeria reaching more than 300 ECRs, students and policy makers. In 2017, she was awarded Right to Research Coalition Next Generation Leadership Award for championing for Open Access as well as initiating Train the Trainers project in Kenya’s universities.
What we Need to Make this Possible!
Anyone willing to help in any way.
We are looking for people who are knowledgable or with expertise in GitHub, adding chat room to a website, documentation, open science research, grant proposal writing and project management.
We’d love the feedback of Open Contributors and Open Users as we continue working on this platform. Encouraging you as well to join the platform once developed.
The purpose of this platform is to reduce the disconnect between people practicing and using Open in Kenya. This project will also include mentorship program and open resources components to it. Open resources will be specific to Kenya’s context. Thus, the contributors and users will be able to learn from each other as they share and use Open resources. As a result, shaping policy within Open landscape in the future.
Get Involved
Please note that we care about having a conducive environment for anyone who wants to be part of this project. Therefore upon joining us, we urge you to abide by the Code of Conduct in all means of interaction. In order to contribute, follow the guidelines in the Contributor Guidelines
Contact Us
For your suggestions or raising any issue about this project, please contact Lilian on:
- Twitter.
- lillianjuma [at] hotmail [dot] com
You can also hang out with us in the Open Connect- Kenya room on Gitter or Open Connect Kenya Slack Community
License
All the content of this repository is released by CC-BY 4.0 license
Acknowledgement
We would like to acknowledge OLS for selecting Open Connect Kenya to be part of the training and mentorship in the first cohort of Open Life Science program
Thank You
Thank you for visiting the project and we do hope that you’ll join us on this amazing journey