Gedaref digital city organization (GDCO) is civil society (NGO @ Gedaref Sudan) founded in partnership with Eindhoven digital city (DSE-Netherlands). GDCO is part of the Telecentres movement since December 2006 and UN-ESCWA network for marginalized underserved and disadvantage community (November 2008) and ITU WSIS networks. all partners initiatives (networks) are working for under-served, marginalized and disadvantage communities at different levels. The Digital City of Eindhoven (DSE) the well-known partner of GDCO donated 750 computer and many community projects were developed. GDCO won 7 global awards for these projects as best Telecentres. GDCO is the founder of the first Telecentre academy in Africa and Middle East 2008. GDCO in a partnership with the Ugabytes organization (Uganda) and its partners hosted the 5th east Africa Telecentre leader?s forum (2008). Although it is an east Africa forum but GDCO invited Telecentre leaders from all regions. GDCO paid the whole cost of the conference in Sudan. Sudan national Telecentre academy (SuNTA) was founded. In 2010 GDCO hosted the fourth Knowledge Networks workshop through ICT Access Points for Disadvantaged Communities in partnership with the united nation Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA). also linked to ITU, UNCTAD, CTO and UN Global Compact.
GDCO started with the standard Telecentres for training and skill development, then move to knowledge Telecentres where it share knowledge, experiences and best practices with the global Telecentre network and transfer it to Sudan, GDCO soon will end with investment Telecentres (they are applications of knowledge centres projects e.g. agro-mobile services and telemedicine) without changing its objectives to keep its Telecentres more sustainable. GDCO is working to start portable Telecentres to provide multi e-services to the communities.
Objectives
1- Best utilization of ICT in a win-win private public private partnership (PPP) for community development
2- Sharing knowledge, experience, best practices and co-ordination between the working partners in the field of Information Technology for better community e-services
3- Bridging the digital divide to include the excluded and connect the unconnected
4- Improve quality of training and skill development
http://gedaref.com/ADBCP/recov/newone/index.php
http://gedaref.com/gdcotel.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=gdco+sudan&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
https://www.youtube.com/user/Gedaref22sudan/videos
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu9lTzYGTC0hIMIcqoqODbg/videos
https://www.flickr.com/photos/90650270@N05/

I- e-Agriculture (GDCO LINK)

Gedaref mechanized agriculture corporation (GMAC) is the biggest rain-fed mechanized agricultural scheme in Sudan. This rain-fed mechanized scheme has a high potential of building a national food stock and provide hard currencies which improve the economy of the country. GMAC farmers are growing more than 8 million feddan (1 feddan = 1.038 acre) heavy clay soil (not including the small farmers) and more than 5 million feddan as a natural grazing (pasture) area (Botana area). There is mismanagement and many farmers get bank rebutted , so a lot of work is needed to improve the crop production (both quality and quality) and the easiest way is ICT.
The e-agriculture project is public private partnership (PPP) for community development which aims to achieve the MDGs and also achieved:-
1. Development of huge database for 10.000 farms and farmers
2. supporting Gedaref mechanized corporation to develop Gedaref national resource digital map
3. online Crop market web portal and cloud computing EasyFarmer
4. Training and capacity building
5. Reduce the cost of farms planning
6. future Agro-Mobile to provide 6 agricultural services
7. Disaster control through ICT (Ebola the deadly virus & bird flu)
8. Solve the conflict between farmers, shepherds and forest

for more information click power point presentation and here for PDF Files

II- e-education & telemedicine (LINKS),
Gedaref University like other Sudanese university has poor infrastructure (e.g. computers).
1- GDCO established 2 computers laboratory (100 PCs) in the faculty of computers science and 20 PCs for the community college (Gedaref University). 17 computers to Gedaref hospital and 17 computers to the insurance medical centers,
2- GDCO donated two units (20 square meters each) as an e-library to the university.
3- Donated also 228 meters square telemedicine UNIT to treat sick people online and improve training and skill development of medical staff and students equipped with laptops and projectors for more information TEXT PDF & PPTX

III- out of school children
Training of ICT skills to out of schoolchildren (illiterate) is another project to this marginalized community. According to statistic, there are more than 3 million out of schoolchildren in Sudan... GDCO started the initiative 2007 with Gedaref ministry of education (represented by H.E. the minister Al-basher Sahal) and developed it with many partners. The project started in wad Elmushamir villages in Gedaref state 2009. The project targets illiterate children who are outside the umbrella of education in rural areas. The partners developed the content and the laptop per child was used for teaching the students. The project is replicated in White Nile state and will replicated all over Sudan to dry the resources of illiteracy. Also it reduces the cost of education and improve its quality. The solar unit is used for mobile charging in rural area to increase internet penetration and connect the unconnected.

IV- people with disability
Disabled individuals are still excluded from many areas of life specially the information technology (IT). GDCO trains the disabled for free and provides some of them with free computers. More than 250 disabled were trained (159 deaf and 140 physical disabled. GDCO provided 60 deaf children computers to practices and communicate at home. GDCO accompanied more than 30 people with disability to national and international conferences. It provided many tools to people with disability. GDCO established vocational training Telecentres with the support of our partner in Eindhoven. click for more PEOPLE with Disability
GDCO was founded through the partnership between Eindhoven and Gedaref municipalities. The digital city of Eindhoven DSE (the well known partner of GDCO) donated 750 computers to GDCO and several e-services projects were developed including e-agriculture, e-education, e-health (telemedicine) and e-inclusion of people with disabilities. GDCO developed a public private partnership to establish its projects according to the community needs. GDCO i a winner of 7 information for development awards and many certificates
GDCO is supporting partner for 15 ICT conference in win-win partnership without paying a penny to promote for the role of ICT in community development. GDCO recently joined the world (global) e-government organization as the chair of the e-Government committee in Gedaref state.
GDCO is one of the founder of the Telecentre movement in MENA region and member in the global Telecentre movement. In addition, it is a member of the East Africa Telecentre Leaders. GDCO organized the 5th EATL forum in Sudan and it paid the total cost of the meeting. the first Telecentre academy in Africa and middle east was founded in Sudan in that conference. we are members in southern Africa leaders and Telecentre Europe.
Eng. Ahmed Eisa is the chair of GDCO and has a great contribution to the Telecentre movement sharing knowledge, experience and best practices online through his blogs and replicating his best practices in many parts of Sudan. GDCO has more than 300 blogs, 4000 photos, 50 videos you tube and many community websites including community Telecentres, mogtaamaa Arabic Telecentre, seepcommunity, Telecentre Europe, GKPF, FLICKR, LinkedIn, Face-book, you tube 2, WSIS Community and twitter.
GDCO was a member of steering committee for knowledge network of marginalized, underserved and disadvantage community in UN-ESCWA. it participated in many of its regional workshops and it organized one of these workshops in Sudan. We supported our partner the farmer union in Gedaref to join the UN-ESCWA network.
GDCO is a partner with ITU in promoting for the world summit of information society (WSIS) through iwrite4wsis initiative. it wrote more than 100 blogs about the WSIS action lines, millennium development goals MDGs and sustainable development goals SDGs. GDCO is participating in the WSIS forum since 2009 with workshop, exhibition and many interventions. in addition it participated with ITU in more than 20 conferences and presenting papers and in panel discussions including ITU world telecom.
in Sudan, at the national level we replicated the digital city in Darfur western Sudan, Almanagil in centre Sudan and Alhasayia in north Sudan. we shared the knowledge of connecting people with disability with 4 organizations and institutions. we supported them with more than 40 computers and more than 250 people with disability were trained. we accompanied 9 of those partners in regional and international conferences. we distributed many computers in Gedaref localities schools. GDCO out of school project was replicated in white Nile state.

http://community.telecentre.org/profile/AHMED
http://community.telecentre.org/profiles/blog/list?user=21w449uixv4i
http://www.unite-it.eu/profile/AHMED
http://www.unite-it.eu/profiles/blog/list?user=21w449uixv4i
http://www.itu.int/net/itu_search/index.aspx?cx=001276825495132238663%3Anqzm45z846q&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=gdco+sudan NO but GDCO participated in more than 70 conferences and workshop with 50 participants from its members and other partners. Nothing for these meetings is paid from the organization limited budget. the cost is either paid by the organizer or personal paid in case of the chairman. Sometimes in case of the group of people with disability we get tickets and accommodations from our partners. the chair of GDCO is a full time volunteer. All the staff (except two) are temporary and on call. GDCO established its projects according to its objectives and community needs to tackle certain problems. at the beginning GDCO provide the computers and set a road map for the project and it pays no money and receive no money it is only consultancy and conducting visibility studies. after few month the whole project is transferred to our partners and we only use its data to replicate it in another places and we avoid all challenges we face in the first project. we have only limited staff (two people) and most of our staff are volunteer and on call. Our methodology is to look for a problem and look for partners who can help us solve the problem and we did not receive any money in GDCO account and we deposit in the account of project where we want to implement and after few month after few month after implementation we move out and only monitor and maintain and get the result. In the case of out of school children we get the money in GDCO so we audit it and have it in separate financial statement see below attached - FinancialStatementsfortheYear2.docx GDCO Council

1- Eng. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohamed Eisa Sudanese
2- Dr. Motasim Ahmed Musa Sudanese
3- Dr. Abd Elaziz Hamad Elawad Sudanese
4- Mr. Babiker Margani Elmahi Sudanese
5- Eng. Lisa Ibrahim Amir Sudanese
6- Eng. Manhal Gafar Tayib Elmusbah Sudanese
7- Eng. Abd Elrahman Ahmed Abd Elrahman Sudanese
8- Eng. Maha Mustafa Suleiman Sudanese
9- Mrs. Marsail Somawel Sudanese
10- Eng. Omer Hassan Mohamed Zain Sudanese
11- Mr. Ali Mohamed Elbadawi Sudanese
12- Eng. Montasir Abd Elrahman Nimairi Sudanese
13- Eng. Saif Omran Sudanese
14- Eng. Muna Saad Sudanese
15- Eng. Moez Mohamed Awad Elseed Sudanese

in addition to this governor body there are more than 25 volunteers working as group on and some on win-win work to design and implement the projects (read more information about what they did) these includes Yasser Mohamed Ahmed, Manhal Gafar, Motasim Abass, dr. Hamza Hassan, Munzir Ahmed, Soheib Babiker, Wael Mamoon and many.
GDCO participated in more than 70 conferences and workshop with 50 participants from its members and other partners. Nothing for these meetings is paid from the organization limited budget. the cost is either paid by the organizer or personal paid in case of the chairman. Sometimes in case of the group of people with disability we get tickets and accommodations from our partners. the chair of GDCO is a full time volunteer. All the staff (except two) are temporary and on call.
GDCOUNlinksandconstitution2.docx