At ease with e-mail: A handbook on using electronic mail for NGOs in developing countries, prepared by the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (New York office) is for beginners. Step by step, and in question-and-answer form, At ease with e-mail introduces the newcomer to the rapidly developing field of communications technology by explaining basic terms and concepts, offering advice and contacts, listing existing computer communications networks and local e-mail service providers and suggesting ways to benefit from these communication tools.
Computer and communications technology are evolving at an extremely rapid pace. At the same time, legal frameworks and regulations for telecommunications vary widely between countries. What may be legal in one country may pose problems in another. Since technical progress and legal differences are a fact of life, we have made every possible effort to provide the reader with further sources of information at the national, regional and international levels. However, readers should check the laws in their own countries.
The directory of country networks which appears in the handbook is not intended to be fully comprehensive but is, rather, a sample of some of the electronic communications services available in a range of different countries. If your country is not listed it may be that either no e-mail access provider is yet in operation (which, unfortunately, is particularly true of some parts of Africa), or that the e-mail access providers in your country did not respond to our enquiries during the preparation of this handbook. In such cases, you might contact universities, government offices or local offices of UN agencies such as the UN Development Programme (UNDP), UNICEF or local UN Information Centres. They may have e-mail connections and might be able to help you gain access. In many countries, for example, UNDP is involved in setting up electronic Sustainable Development Networks, described in Part 2, Section 1 of this handbook, which involve NGOs.
Readers should be advised that this is not a book on Local Area Networks (LANs) which connect computer users in the same organization and on the same or nearby premises. At ease with e-mail describes and explains the use of `remote' computer communications and networking to bridge the gap of geographical distance. E-mail is not only useful for obtaining information from international sources or from overseas, however. At the national and regional levels, e-mail and computer networking can help build `national' and `regional' information resources that can be disseminated in local languages. By and large, messages and information that you send and receive locally on your own network can be in any language, although some software is limited to characters from the Latin alphabet.
At ease with e-mail: A handbook on using electronic mail for NGOs in developing countries, is available in English, French and Spanish. In this edition of the handbook, generally comprehensible information (e.g. in the directory of country networks) has been left in English. This compromise reflects the current situation in international electronic communications since most of the `conferences,' bulletin boards, on-line databases and `systems operators' operate in the English language.
The publishers would welcome suggestions for other language editions (and sources of funding) and any comments or observations readers may have on how possible future editions of this handbook might be updated and improved. Welcome to the information superhighway!
United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service, New York
ngls@igc.apc.org or
ngls@nywork2.undp.org
Friedrich Ebert Foundation, New York
fesny@igc.apc.org or fesny@undp.org
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