Awate 2020 Project Launch

The Ad-Hoc Task Force (ATF) for the Awate2020 project* is glad to announce a Paltalk session for Saturday, April 23, 2016, at 8pm Berlin Time, and 2pm, North American West Coast**. We cordially invite all friends and supporters of awate.com to attend the session. The session will be held at the Awate2020 room and we will try to limit the duration of the session to two hours.

Introduction

As you all know, awate.com is in its sixteenth year of uninterrupted service of informing, inspiring and emboldening Eritreans to assertively struggle for freedom and justice in Eritrea. Over the years, we have accumulated so much experience, goodwill, and morale equity that we are determined to steer our operations to a new direction and towards what we envision awate.com to be in the year 2020.  We strive to make it continue playing an important and constructive role in the democratization process of Eritrea.

Institutionalizing Awate.com

The idea of institutionalizing our entity and expanding to other areas of service has always stayed alive in our plans. Alas, due to lack of resources, both funds and manpower, our ideas remained just a dream, a plan on paper that never crossed to the level of implementation. Institutionalizing does not only assure its continuity, but also will invariably lead to professionalizing it, which in turn will lead to growth and expansions, to a myriad of possibilities in the direction of human ingenuity, spirit, and potentialities.

Importantly, sharing responsibilities is vital in ensuring the continuity of awate.com, as an institution to be there for posterity—it’s time that the long held dream of expansion and institutionalization of awate.com is realized! The Awate Team (AT) has held this dream for too long, however, due to luck of continuous dedicated support in doing the groundwork, it has not accomplished much. Understandably, the AT gives priority to the production of information, news, opinion pieces, etc., to serve the readers of the website as opposed to consuming its time on the technical and administrative aspects of the operation.

Ad Hoc Task Force (ATF)

This Ad Hoc Task Force is being mobilized for the sole purpose of institutionalizing Awate.com through global support groups. ATF is committed to help set up a solid support group of committed people so that we can all achieve the goals that we have always aspired to achieve. Over the years AT has been listening to diverse ideas in a casual manner but last year it carried out an extensive survey, from which it learned many of its weaknesses, strengths, potentials and threats. Many prominent people participated in the survey and AT will share parts of it in due course.

ATF’s plans include the following:

1. To establish support groups in different geographical areas
2. To solicit immediate funds and ongoing contributions to sustain AT’s operations.
3. To help in the institutionalization under the slogan/goal: Awate 2020
4. Awate.com will be the official mouthpiece of Awate2020
5. Awate 2020 will be structured to include: a) a think-tank b) a research and consultancy institute, and c) a publishing unit.
6. The structure will have a board of trustees/board of directors.
7. ***Awate 2020 will be formally incorporated as nonprofit (Not-for-profit) institution by the end of the summer of 2016.

The above are the main objectives of the exercise that should be achieved. Initially, the vision is to establish a support group that should reach at least 200 people by the end of the year. The Support Group will help the AT expand to acquire a license of a nonprofit (not-for-profit) organization, in setting up a board of trustees, and other activities related to structural requirements. With the cooperation of all friends of Awate, we are confident we will be able to build a strong support base and help the operation elevate to a higher pedestal.

The AT has shared its immediate plans with ATF, which are as follow:

1. Execute a long held pending plan to reintroduce an Arabic and Tigrinya as a clone of the current English website. Awate.com is well placed to bring the “three parallel universes” to help the fragmented national platform to a one unified whole. And that involves redesigning the website and other technical tasks. This, therefore, makes it compulsory that we reach out to people who can help with the technical aspects of running a website, security, and full automation, etc.,
2. Equipment like camera’s, PCS and other gadgets are needed to upgrade the operation.
3. The website is aiming at a $12,000 immediate fund to stay afloat and accomplish the above.
4. Create sustainable support base.

Thank you

Ad Hoc Task Force (ATF) For the Establishment of Awate 2020 Project

*PS: this vision is almost a decade old and never got implemented for many reasons beyond our control.
** We are sorry that it will be too early for our dedicated friends in Australia, particularly Perth in Western Australia. But we hope early risers in the East Coast, Melbourne and the rest, would attend.
** PPS.The IRS explains that for them “not-for-profit” refers to an activity, for example, a hobby (like fishing). In contrast, “nonprofit” refers to an organization established for purposes other than profit-making. Note: nonprofit does not necessarily mean “charitable.”