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

Meet the Mentors - DIGRA AMBASSADORS PROGRAM

-
Image
After three weeks of community engagement focused on Internet of Things, Local Content, and Local Policy discussions, our most competitive Ambassadors made it to the mentorship phase. Fifty DIGRA Ambassadors from every continent are being mentored by leaders in the Internet Governance space to prepare them for youth engagement in Internet Governance.

Digital Grassroots is honored by the dedication and volunteerism of the leaders collaborating with us to ensure our Ambassadors kickstart their youth engagement in Internet Governance. The 4 week mentorship phase will include topics on the role of youth in Internet Governance, identifying their stakeholder group, digital inclusion, networking in IG and shaping the future we want by contributing to a communique highlighting the needs of youth in local communities.

Meet our mentors, highlighted below in no particular order. Each of our mentors represent 9 different countries in 4 continents, collaborating via internet for capacity building …
Read more

STATE OF THE NET UGANDA

-
Image
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…
Read more

Internet of Things - DIGRA Ambassadors Program

-
Image
Digital Grassroots works to proactively engage youth in addressing internet related issues in their communities through digital literacy, networking, and online activism. This month, we launched our maiden Digital Grassroots Ambassadors program. Our selected Ambassadors come from 36 countries across the globe and our gender distribution in the cohorts was 50/50.

The above cover photo from Wevyn Muganda proves youth are doing great things in their community through internet literacy and our program is fostered to create more community engagement through youth to eradicate issues online, which inevitably will increase wellbeing offline.

In reference to the photo, Wevyn writes:

'The biggest problem in the communities nearby now is the rise of online recruitment to violent extremism and radicalisation (Mombasa, Kenya). While recruitment is still taking place offline through recruiters, now it is moving to social media spaces. My colleagues and I conducted this training to empower the …
Read more