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Click on the link to read an overview of fundraising and for a link to a Glossary of Fundraising and Grantmaking Terminology.

IkamvaYouth's innovative approach to addressing inequalities in South African education has caught the attention of a group of Singapore-based volunteers. After spending a month volunteering for IkamvaYouth at the Khayelitsha branch earlier this year, Singapore-based Florence Jennings decided she wanted to do more. She has enrolled a group of dedicated volunteers in Singapore who, together with the South African ikamvanites, are working tirelessly to organise the fundraising trip of a life time!

The Sudanese government is engaged in an increasingly blatant effort to muzzle and intimidate Sudan’s independent press, Human Rights Watch says. “While international media attention has been focused on Darfur, the Sudanese authorities in Khartoum have been stepping up their harassment of Sudanese journalists and newspapers,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) says it applauds The Daily Voice's News Editor, Gasant Abarder, for his ethical stand in not testifying in the civil defamation case involving a poultry chain. "The FXI is disturbed to note that both Courts do not recognise that Abarder has a 'just excuse' not to testify."

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) is very concerned about the aggressive campaign being waged against Dr. Souad Saleh, a professor of Islamic jurisprudence at the Azhar University, following her publicly stating her opinion on the Niquab (the Islamic full body veil), saying it is not compulsory in Islam. Her statement angered many fundamentalists, some of whom have called for the "shedding of her blood".

The Lesotho chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa says transformation of the state broadcasters now seems unlikely, writes Mzimkhulu Sithetho on "The institute’s former national chairperson, Thabo Thakalekoala, has been in the forefront of a Misa campaign to turn Radio Lesotho and Lesotho TV into public broadcasters. But he now says that the campaign is unlikely to succeed as there seems to be resistance from authorities."

On 2 November 2006, the Nigerian government filed criminal charges at the Federal High Court in Abuja against Mr. Shehu Garba, a former president of the Nigerian Guild of Editors and currently media consultant to that organization's vice president, Atiku Abubakar, accusing him of violating the Official Secrets Act. Garba is being charged with illegally obtaining, reproducing, and retaining documents relating to the death in a bomb blast in 1997 of Bagauda Kaltho, then Kaduna State correspondent for "The New"' magazine.

The decade since the mid-90s saw a series of changes in the communications environment as African governments moved away from monopoly ownership of national telcom operators to competition among a variety of players offering communications services. Open markets and independent and transparent regulators were increasingly seen as necessary conditions for investment.

Unsurprisingly, the main stories in today's Kinshasa press are all related to the second and final round of DR Congo presidential election which was held yesterday all over the country. On Sunday, 29 October, as they went to the ballot box to select the country's first democratically president in more that 40 years, Congolese voters demonstrated a sense "discipline, dignity and responsibility", in the way they did in July's first round of voting, Le Phare notes.

Salih Mahmoud Osman, a lawyer who has defended and given free legal aid to hundreds of victims of human rights abuses in Darfur, Sudan for the past two decades will receive Human Rights Watch's highest award on November 7. Osman, who is from the Darfur region of Sudan, has provided legal representation to those who have been arbitrarily detained and tortured by the Sudanese government, regardless of which ethnic group they are from.

The supreme leader of Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts judiciary council Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys is in Cairo, Egypt, to convene with senior Egyptian officials over the tense situation surrounding the peace talks in the Sudanese capital Khartoum between the interim government and Somalia's Islamists.

The Portfolio Committee on Communications is leaving no stones unturned in influencing the rollout of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to all South Africans. Without access to the means to communicate and distribute information and communication South Africa's democracy will remain a monopoly of the rich and the powerful. Access and affordability of Internet and broadband connectivity have remained a problem area for the government and this is despite the government's efforts to make ICTs available to all South Africans.

All public schools in Rwanda are expected to join the information super-highway by the end of next year. Already, half of the primary and secondary schools have embraced the new technology, which has been given priority by the Government under its 2020 vision programme. The on-going programme includes tertiary and university students, and is part of a national IT policy to make the tiny Great Lakes nation, which is still recovering from the 1994 genocide, a force to reckon with globally.

Seeking to reach East African adolescents and young people in the battle against AIDS, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has launched its first interactive feature in Swahili, an online game that empowers the young to make good life choices and prevent HIV.

There has been a recent set of developments in South Africa that bring convergence between the worlds of telecommunications, media and broadcast much closer. Three things in particular – media liberalisation, new technologies to deliver media and yet another project that promises cheap bandwidth – all make it likely that South Africa will become the first fully converged market on the continent.

Health workers are soon to start using their cell phones to track and control the spread of HIV/Aids and other diseases countrywide. This is due to a mobile phone application that has been introduced in Rwanda before any other African country. The application has been introduced under the auspices of Voxiva Inc-US and GSMA. a global trade association for GSM mobile phone operators.

Tajudeen Adbul-Raheem explores the reaction from the lovers and haters of Fidel Castro to news of his recent illness.

Earlier in the week 7 African Governments were meant to be in South Africa for a further signing ceremony for the NEPAD Government Protocol. Four failed to turn up for “logistical” reasons. As we all know, it’s difficult getting airfares to South Africa these days. And at the last moment Zambia decided it wasn’t ready to sign as the new Minister had only been in post for a few weeks after the recent election.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the Sudanese authorities' harassment of local and foreign journalists, which has been stepped up since the summer of 2006, barely one year after President Omar al-Bashir announced he was lifting the state of emergency.