Welcome to Digital Grassroots



Digital Grassroots is a youth initiative created to increase citizenship by Internet Society youth fellows at the Internet Governance Forum 2017. It was developed to proactively engage youth in addressing internet problems at a grassroots level.

Our website will feature news, keep you posted on our activities, and allow you to receive annotations from Digital Grassroots leaders in the program. This year we will be working on increasing Digital Citizenship in regions where internet access is comparatively low. Join our network to be part of these initiatives.
Our work, having a diverse board of directors and coming from different stakeholder groups in Internet Governance, is a demonstration that Digital Citizenship has no borders. We come from different countries with different social, economic and political challenges, but we are united by the conviction that digital citizenship is the source of prosperity, justice, and equality and as such we must do everything on our power to shape our digital future. 

In recognizing the role of internet to accomplish the SDGs, we invite you to follow our updates and social networks. Being a part of our movement increases capacity building among youth and creates a collective voice on airing and working toward our needs as young people.

Sign up to be a Digital Grassroots Ambassador today.

Popular posts from this blog

STATE OF THE NET UGANDA

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The Ugandan Parliament passed the Excise Duty (Amendment) Bill which is social media tax legislation that is will take effect on 1st July.



This means that social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp will be subject to a daily tax. There will be also be a levy on mobile money services.mobile phone subscriber using platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook 200 Ugandan shillings per day.

In the 2016 presidential election in Uganda the Ugandan authorities blocked access to social media sites such as Facebook, WhatsApp claiming that the sites would be used by the opposition to organize and mobilize people for protests. At this time mobile money services were also affected. Only about 5 million of around 42 million Ugandans have access to the banking sector leaving the rest to mobile money services.



The government claimed that it passed the legislation in order to raise revenue so as to offset the huge Ugandan national debt. Activists, lawyers and the peopl…
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Opinion's Corner: How Technology Shapes Internet Principles

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John Madayese was a Digital Grassroots Ambassador from Cohort 1 and now he is part of a team within the IGF Youth Ambassadors Program. The group is composed by Lilian Kamara, Francis Bizoza, Conrad Ekisa. and John Madayese.

 One of the topics they were more interested in was Internet Principles and the impact of technology in Internet. This is the article they produced for the said program.



How Technology Shapes Internet Principles
Tim Berners-Lee points out, “There was a time when people felt that the internet was another world, but now people realize it’s a tool that we use in this world.” Internet has become integrated into the lives of human, any human without an internet today looks like someone who is not living. The internet was built upon certain non-negotiable features upon which it takes its foundation. These are called invariants and include global reach, general purpose, innovation without requiring permission, accessibility, interoperability, collaboration, technology and n…
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Local Policies - DIGRA Ambassadors Program

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The final week of training for Cohort 1 Digital Grassroots Ambassadors before the mentorship phase was on Internet for Economy. Following a take on Internet ofThings and Local Content, the youth channeled their community engagement to internet policies affecting their community.


Local policies are vital in building and maintaining the core values of a healthier internet. The openness and bottom-up approach of internet governance only works when every digital citizen participates and defends their digital rights, which includes human rights such freedom of expression and privacy.

DIGRA Ambassador Eileen said;

"Unfortunately, employers (use) your online identity as a prerequisite for hiring and during work as a way to control how you could be useful for the job... that is severe intrusion in our privacy. Social media representation of ourselves is not always accurate...
We can't forget that, as soon as we accept the terms and conditions to create a user in some online platform, we …
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