How a virtual world helps the real one

At first glance virtual worlds have nothing in common with African people in need. One is a "game" for wealthy Westerners and the others struggle to get through the day on a bowl of rice. Alanagh Recreant, Second Life embodiment of Dorette Steenkamp, founder and co-executive director of Uthango, disagrees. Uthango is a non-profit organization in South Africa, a unique investment and development company with a special focus on bridging the digital divide, micro-enterprise development, intercultural dialogue, crime prevention, community mental health and most importantly, infrastructure development. They specialize in social innovation to implement best practices in sustainable development. The name 'Uthango' is a Nguni term that refers to the traditional circular kraal where families protect their livestock, encourage dialogue and make important decisions in rural Africa.

Kraal

Uthango is also the first African non-profit to use virtual worlds for strategic positioning and raising global awareness of their goals and programs. Their answer to the question ‘what does an NGO do in virtual worlds’ and ‘are you not better off in the real world addressing poverty’ is: “It is not an either or for us; we need to be in both areas to use technology and its innovative edge to make a difference in the lives of our beneficiaries”. Their challenge is to find resources to make it possible, and they hope that their courage will be contagious.

Uthango offices in Second Life

To better understand the activities of Uthango in Second Life, we asked the co-executive director Dorette Steenkamp to answer a few questions.

Q: What does Uthango hope to achive with its presence in Second Life?

The main objective for Uthango Social Investments to be in virtual worlds (of which SL is the first) is to raise awareness for our real world projects that require international benefactors, angel investments and corporate sponsorships. The poverty eradication nature of our projects loops strongly around asset-based development principles and civic engagement, where we need substantial resources to make a difference in communities. As secondary objective, we hope to create an immersive 3D environment and bring in authentic African content, such as African art, music, literature - and play a role to facilitate a platform for Africans to engage with each other and the rest of the world. Thirdly, and equally importantly, we wish to share best practice solutions in our field of development and community building globally and Second Life is a good platform for forging networks and collaboration in this regard, as many innovators are attracted to virtual worlds.

Q: Second Life is often characterized as a game. Would you agree?

Second Life has all the elements of a game and is most certainly rooted in the gaming experience, where the ‘look-and-feel’ suggests a surreal reality that is removed from every day challenges and a professional environment. However (!) it is short-sighted to stereotype this virtual world as a ‘game’ – given the real world linkages, impact and transference. There is a strong case to be made for the fact that a new relationship economy is forming and that virtual worlds offer the tool for such economies to thrive. Being part of the early-adopters enable us to shape the formation of the mechanism that will most certainly shape the future of global interaction. The answer is therefore, Second Life is what you choose to make of it – very much like any real world environment where people congregate.

Q: The most basic business use of virtual worlds is marketing - raising awareness of company's brand, its aims and values. Does UTHANGO have any plans for using Second Life beyond that? How?

At this stage we are not in a position to share too much about our strategy in Second Life, except for saying that the vision and presence of UTHANGO in/for virtual worlds go far beyond marketing, fundraising and awareness. This is a fundamental first step in forming relationships and building trust. Trust cannot be transferred automatically into virtual worlds, because a company has a good reputation and name in the real world – in our opinion. Second Life has its own set of standards for measuring trust-worthy behavior and companies/brands need to understand how relationships are being built in such worlds. The plans of Uthango is related directly to being a trusted source of information and a trusted gateway to/from real world Africa – in its affiliations with other reputable individuals, organizations and companies. The plans of USI include various smaller projects that demonstrate real world gain, starting with [e]bizikile (African bike) where virtual bicycles are being sold to raise awareness for the place of bicycles in economies in Africa, and also purchase real world bikes that could make an immediate impact for families living in poverty.

Q: One of the first UTHANGO SL projects was the African bike. The purchase of the bike goes toward charity, but the virtual bike itself is really fun to ride, too. This is a great example of providing mutual value - something charitable projects in real life usually lack. What other value besides financial does UTHANGO hope to gain from Second life? And what value do you think you can provide to the residents of the virtual world?

The value we would like to add to virtual worlds is in sharing best practice in international sustainable development – at a practical, yet academic level. On a more personal and humane level, the staff and beneficiaries of USI have much value to add in the form of their experiences and building shared understanding of challenges and opportunities in Africa. There are many misperceptions about African countries and people, and it is the intention of Uthango to create an enabling visual and auditory environment where boundaries could be adjusted and prejudices addressed. Africans should speak for themselves and information poverty could be countered in isolated developed countries by providing accurate and direct access to communities and the people living in Africa – also by using mobile telecommunications. We believe we could potential play a groundbreaking role in setting up models that demonstrate community building between geographically diverse regions and income-levels – using virtual worlds.

Q: How do you see virtual worlds and UTHANGO's role in them in, say, five years?

We see virtual worlds as being centre stage in the technology used by most internet users today. We also see that African networks would have tapped into virtual worlds’ technologies and social networks as a natural extension of existing practices in Africa. There will be an explosion of African content world-wide and the continent will open up for investment and specifically tourism on a growth curve that will impact on poverty levels. We are very positive about Africa’s future. Uthango will play a key role (but not as the only organization or company – of course not!!) for the first year or two, and will then probably be overtaken in leading the African entry into virtual worlds by late adopting telecommunications or banking companies, better resourced. It will continue to advocate for bridging digital divide, but would have found the latent income and sustaining flow of resources that it needs to fulfill its real world projects. If USI does well, what it sets out to do; there will be many other individuals and companies (at first never considering it) now entering and embracing virtual worlds – and pursuing the inclusion of African content and channeling of African gain - as if it was their idea in the first place!

Q: What can we do to help UTHANGO, both in RL and in SL?

It depends entirely *who* is asking the question, as assistance could be in many forms. Promoting the company name ‘Uthango Social Investments’ in your own networks (as a pioneering development agency with incredible vision) is always much help, and technical or profession pro bono work makes a lot of difference to our outcomes. This is needed both in SL and in RL – as we require IT support almost all the time.As an organization we are overwhelmed and burdened by the sheer levels of poverty we encounter daily. With almost 20 000 poverty-stricken, unemployed youth on our database, and the capacity to work directly with less than 10% of those individuals in a short term period, we do actually require not much less than the financial assistance to pay salaries of more fieldworkers, social development experts and operational or programme-specific costs. A planning grant (relieving one or two of the directors and a staff member at least) to be able to spend time setting up fundraising and marketing systems related to virtual worlds’ strategies and attend conferences for networking purposes. An angel investor into our causes I suppose :)

Q: Why?

Why not? There is more to gain than there is to lose … if you are not part of virtual worlds.

Thank you very much and good luck!

----

Artesia fully supports the activites of Uthango, and you can help, too! You can buy a virtual bike in Second Life from a Uthango vendor. One of them is located in our office in Silicon Island. The proceeds from the virtual bike sales will go toward purchasing real bicycles which will be donated to learners in Africa.

More about Uthango Social investments and their Second Life initiatives:

• http://www.uthango.org/
• http://slafrica.wordpress.com/