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Background
AIDS Relief Foundation started from
a desire to use information and communications technologies
(ICTs) to improve the way in which we address the AIDS
pandemic in Africa. The central focus was on AIDS, the
tragic results of which Joy Tang, ARF’s founder experienced
this first hand while traveling through Africa.
oneVillage Family Identity
The image of "Mama Africa" came to African
artist and musican Alain Kodjovi one day during his
meditation. The following day, AIDS Relief Foundation
(ARF) founder Joy Tang spoke with Mr. Kodjovi to share
her thoughts on "Save the Village" as a theme
within ARF. Upon hearing Joy's vision, Alain felt that
her ideas reflected the image he waw in his meditation
and asked Joy to use the Mama Africa as the logo for
the "Save the Village" effort.
Months later it was determined that the language of
"saving" villages did not connote a sense
of empowerment. Similarly, the name "AIDS Relief
Foundation" implied that "relief from AIDS"
would be the focus of the organization's energy. The
organization's actual focus on leveraging information
and communication technologies to bring people and groups
of synergy together with the overarching belief that
we are all one (that this planet really is all one big
village) gave rise to the name "oneVillage"
as the appropriate replacement.
As of April 20, 2003, the AIDS Relief Foundation began
doing business as the oneVillage Foundation and the
standalone Mama Africa image was used as the logo for
the associated for-profit entity oneVillage.biz.
Mission
OVF sees the challenge and opportunity of using Information
Communication Technology (ICT) to address World
Urgent Issues, by providing a platform for an integrated
approach to sustainable development. People have lost,
or stopped practicing, the knowledge of sustainable
living. Our mission is to connect art, science and education
with proactive, hands on, community oriented actions
on the ground that promote more sustainable ways of
living in both developing and developed parts of the
world. We are devoted to increasing collaboration and
access to ICT in under-served communities, facilitating
local content creation and dissemination, and building
bridges among digital and physical communities globally.
Vision
The oneVillage vision entails the creation of ICT centers
in rural villages and developing countries connected
by a collaboration portal that allows resource matching,
project management, documentation and corruption-free
allocation and accounting of funds.
oneVillage.biz
Forty
Million Hopefuls a presentation, given to the black
congressional caucus in 2003 by OVF Founder Joy Tang
was a plan to develop project to promote local economic
self-sufficency through entrepreneurship training. This
effort led eventually to the development of the
oneVillage.biz website. OVB when formally established
and fully capitalized, will be the for-profit consulting
and Business Solutions arm of OVF, complementing OVF's
work and focusing on the capitalization of income generating
aspects. These ventures will eventually fund OVF's non
profit work.
Fiscal Sponsorship
OVF headquarters offices are in San Jose, California
and it has affiliates in Winneba, Ghana, Ibadan, Nigeria
and Nairobi, Kenya. OVF is operating under the fiscal
sponsorship of the Institute for African Art
and Culture (Tax ID number 94-272-9947).
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our Plaforms, Approaches and Vehicles for Growth |
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 The
"oneVillage Mama" logo
developed by the Togoan artist Kodjovi symbolizes
the aspiration of OVF to be a force for unity
within the "Global Village"
The Mama Africa image was used in combination
with the oneVillage Initiative's simple "global
growth from love" logo to create the OVF
logo. |
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 oneVillage
Initiative is an multi-sector, assets-based
approach to development that starts with computers+Internet
to enable local research and analysis capacity.
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World Urgent Issues
 As
part of our multi-sector approach, we consider
the synergistic relationship between local problems
as well as larger World Urgent Issues such as
poverty, species loss, global climate change AIDS,
etc.
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Holistic
ICT for EcoLiving
The promotion and use of holistic
information and communication technologies (ICT)
is central to the oneVillage Foundation and oneVillage.biz
efforts.
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oneVillage.biz
offers consulting and developing services for
the emerging sustainability, social venture and
enterprise fields. |
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