Posted by Jana Melpolder on May 31, 2019 in the categories: News
Originally posted in a local Administration in Margibi County, Liberia.
There is a new development project in town where some government facilities are to benefit from a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded ICT capacity development and WIFI improvements to Margibi County. In an effort to strengthen the Liberian Government, USAID and Inveneo, an international NGO and USAID implementing partner, has partnered with the Ministries of Education, Internal Affairs and Health to improve WIFI technology and local ICT capacity in five counties. Inveneo is working with its certified ICT Partners (ICIPs) and local ICT small businesses to install high speed WIFI networks and train government ICT Coordinators at the beneficiary locations to help them do their jobs better and provide better service to our community.
FJ Cava, (left) Senior Program Manager of Inveneo, with several members of the Ministry of Education of Liberia and Inveneo staff member Eric Zan, (second from right) Senior Project Engineer of Inveneo.
Speaking on Friday, February 15, 2019 to the Margibi County Information Officer, Mr. FJ Cava, Inveneo’s Senior Program Manager, said “the Recover.IT Project is a USAID funded pilot project that is targeted to benefit five of Liberia’s fifteen Counties: Margibi, Bong, Nimba, Lofa and Grand Bassa. We hope that if these five counties are successful we can expand into the last ten counties and bring better WIFI technology and ICT training to all the counties of Liberia.”
Eric Zan (second from right) supports local ICT technicians and learns from their experiences and expertise.
Six beneficiaries of the Recover.IT Project are in Margibi County. Mr. Cava told the Margibi County Communication Center that the targeted beneficiaries to be served are: Margibi County Service Center (MCSC), C.H. Rennie Hospital, Ministry of Education County Office in Kakata, Kakata Rural Teacher Training Institute (KRTTI), and the District Health Team in Mamba-Kaba, along with minor improvements to the National Reference Lab.
Left to right: Eric Zan, Senior Project Engineer of Inveneo and Robert Marsh, Executive Director & Co-Founder of Inveneo.
Mr. Cava hoped that upon successful completion in the five counties Inveneo’s Recover.IT Project would be extended in order to serve the remaining counties of Liberia. For more information about the Recover.IT Project please visit: www.usaid.gov/liberia or more information about Inveneo please visit: www.inveneo.org.
Posted by Jana Melpolder on February 3, 2015 in the categories: News
As part of the Ebola Response Connectivity Initiative (ERCI) project that Inveneo is doing with other partners, the next step is underway – training local technicians in Sierra Leone.
The Inveneo team has been on the ground in West Africa for several weeks now, and they recently started training the Inveneo Certified ICT Partner (ICIP) “Damsel Business Centre” on building Internet service for medical centers in Sierra Leone! To kick off this training, Damsel representatives have been meeting with Inveneo throughout this first week in February to go through a tower climbing safety course.
Inveneo’s Director of Field Operations Samuel Perales leads training and discussion with employees from Damsel Business Centre, an ICT business in Sierra Leone.
The training participants include Inveneo’s Director of Field Operations Samuel Perales, Inveneo’s Senior Field Engineers Sean Burgoyne, Matt Hulse, and Eric Kuhnke, and finally Inveneo’s ICIP partner Damsel from Sierra Leone. Damsel’s Director Eugene Tani-Luke brought with him five technicians to also take part in the training. Although representatives from AirTel and the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) were invited, they were unable to make it.
After the climbing training is completed the team will continue with preparations and logistics for the first Internet connectivity site. Inveneo’s current goal is to start the first Internet installation by Monday, February 9th.
As Inveneo has been helping Damsel on safety throughout this training, they have been taking safety measures of their own. The men are washing their hands with bleach water, and when they enter a hotel nearby, a hotel staff member will take their temperatures on a regular basis. As positive as it is that Ebola infection rates have been going down, Inveneo is leaving no room for its team or its partnering teams to become sick in the process. In addition, NetHope has supplied the team with two Icelandic medics who may travel with them.
Inveneo’s Samuel Perales feels that this ICIP training process is just the beginning of a vital project that will make a big impact in Sierra Leone. He notes that Internet connectivity is always important and an issue for any humanitarian organization, no matter if they work in immediate relief or long-term development. He notes that the ERCI project is no different – connectivity will remain an important tool for years to come as communities rebuild from the devastating effects of the illness. The Inveneo team and its ICIP will continue to work long and hard to make connectivity available for those in need it most in order to make as big an impact as possible.
The Inveneo engineers have been very happy with the collaboration of this combined effort. The teamwork between NetHope, the ETC, and more has made an incredible difference in getting this project off the ground. Mr. Perales explains further, “One thing that’s been really nice is the collaboration between the ETC, NetHope, Inveneo, and Ericsson Response…we’re all out in the field, we’re all supporting each other, and we like to say that ‘There are no lines between us.’ That camaraderie is showing through as we continue to build our dedicated team.”
As the Ebola crisis continues to hit hard in West Africa, Inveneo recently launched its Ebola Response Connectivity Initiative (ERCI) this past week to bring Internet connectivity to doctors, nurses, and others working at medical centers located in Sierra Leone. On Wednesday December 10th, several of our team’s engineers, contractors, and few Volo employees gathered together in San Francisco for pre-deployment training.
The ERCI team who met in San Francisco for pre-deployment training.
The ERCI project is already underway and the Inveneo team has been busy ordering and moving ICT equipment to a warehouse in Accra, Ghana. Several pieces of equipment that we are using for this project include Ubiquiti’s Rocket M5 Radio, AirMax Sectors, RocketDish 30 cBi Dishes, AirFiber5, NanaoBridge M5 25, and the Mikrotik RouterBoard CCR 1009.
Several members of the Inveneo team join Volo in the Ebola Responder Communications Initiative class.
In addition, our Senior Field Engineer Samuel Perales and contractor Eric Kuhnke will be traveling to Accra, Ghana on Saturday, December 13th. In Ghana, Samuel and Eric will start sorting all the equipment that arrived, and soon they will be joined by several other team members throughout December. Our Sierra Leone partners, called ICIPs (Inveneo Certified ICT Partners), will also travel to Ghana in mid-January to be trained on creating broadband connections. We certainly have a great amount of work ahead of us, and we are certainly glad to be partnering with such a talented team!
After their training is complete our ICIPs and contractors will travel back to Sierra Leone to create Internet connectivity for medical centers that will be used by Ebola victims in the near future. Inveneo will provide long-term support after the technicians have set up Internet connectivity in medical centers so that strong and permanent WiFi connectivity is available to the doctors and medical staff working at those centers.
Inveneo is no stranger to providing aid after an international disaster hit an area hard, leaving no to little WiFi connectivity. In fact, throughout the past several years Inveneo has responded to devastating crises around the world. In the Philippines we creating emergency Internet connectivity for humanitarian organizations after Super Typhoon Haiyan struck, and starting in 2010, our team assisted Haiti in rebuilding its Internet infrastructure after the devastating earthquake. If you would like to donate to this our impactful ERCI project, please visit our donate page.
