Kelechi Anyadiegwu - will she link more closely with Dadamac? February 17, 2011

On the whole what I do in Dadamac I do because it is my "meaningful work" rather than my "paid work" (see Dadamac Open Knowledge http://www.dadamac.net/openknowledge ) so I'm not is a positiion to offer her any paid work straight away - but maybe that might happen at some future date.

Kelechi  has a stunningly good profile and I imagine she will get snapped up very quickly for some kind of full-time position, but while she has some time on her hands I hope she will get to know us better.

In my ideal world it would work out this way (and perhaps it could work in a similar way for other people too).

• Kelechi and I will discover ways for her to help Dadamac while also helping herself.
• She will start with a fairly small simple task (so we get started quickly and neither of us have to put in too much time before finding out how we would work together)
• I will offer some tasks which are easy for me to explain, and will benefit her because she will start  to learn more about Dadamac and how our systems work.
• Her first task will have a useful output for Dadamac (e.g. an updated summary on some work we are doing, a new collection of useful links, a report on "the small print" of some website that could be relevant to our contacts but might just be "a tease").
• She will get credit for all the work that she does, so that she will be developing a personal Dadamac profile, to use as evidence of her skills and knowledge.
• She will be getting to know people in our network and will be getting known by them
• If she finds opportunities for bidding for funds or suchlike, and wants to do so under the Dadamac Limited umbrella, then we will be able to look at those options together and see if she wants to try and create a paid opportunity for herself. 
• If she has a favourite project that she wants to raise funds for, by running a sponsored event, then we can look at that together and see if it is appropriate to come  under the umbrella of Dadamac Foundation - http://www.dadamac.net/foundation

If she is interested and sends me her email address then I can add her as a contributor to the posterous that we have for dadamac learners

She can also register with Dadamac by going to the home page and clicking the link at the bottom of the page. Later we will have profile pages (linking to these introductions that I write). We are still working on the profile page feature, which means that she can start to fill in a profile page straight away - but it won't be visible to other people yet.

Looking at her tweets immediately see something that I would like her to follow up for me.

She tweeted - RT @olpc: One Laptop Per Child & African Union Commit to Providing Laptops to Primary School Students Throughout Africa http://ur1.ca/39oe1

I  would like her to check the link and give me some feedback. The link looks so positive - and yet my heart sinks when I see it. This is because years of reading links like that have taught me to be cynical. When I read "throughout Africa" now I realise it may well mean "in lot's of locations in different countries in Africa"  - but it is unlikely to connect in any way with the propel and schools that I know in Africa. That is unsurprising - Africa is a big continent and there are so many schools to reach - but I am weary of reading of things that suggest they are relevant across the continent, but really only touch the lives of a select few, and there is no way that the people I know can tap into them. Is this just another of those "select few" initiatives or is there something there that I should be sharing with people in the Dadamac community who are in schools and would love to be involved in initiatives like  One Laptop Per Child.

I have tweeted her and hope to hear back. If anyone else is interested in connecting with Dadamac in a similar way please contact me - pamela.mclean@dadamac.net  - put "helping dadamac" in the subject line - or send me a Direct Message on Twitter  @pamela_mclean