Category: Introduction

APC’s internal management transition in 2017 turned out to be a very smooth process thanks to the commitment from both our outgoing director, Anriette Esterhuysen, and our incoming director, Chat Garcia Ramilo.

These changes in the management of APC brought new approaches to the leadership of our programmes and new visions that will help us to continue being a vibrant organisation, one that is very well recognised globally for enabling people to access a free and open internet, improving their lives and creating a fairer world, as our mission states.

Throughout the year we were looking back to our roots, when most of our members focused on providing access to the internet to activists and organisations working for development, given that 50% of the world’s population is still not connected and most of them live in developing countries and in rural areas. This situation has led us to make a greater effort to put forward new initiatives to connect these communities by providing new solutions based on free and open source software and hardware that nowadays can provide a new opportunity to bring connectivity at an affordable cost.

APC members have been working for a very long time with grassroots organisations and we know first-hand about their difficulties in attaining reliable and affordable internet connections. They have been waiting for a long time to get connected by traditional commercial providers, which are denying them this access, arguing that it is not economically feasible to implement the infrastructure needed, especially in rural areas.

Deploying community networks is a new alternative for these communities that are still unconnected or underconnected. Experiences from APC members that have been implementing different models of community networks, like Rhizomatica in Mexico, Pangea in Catalonia, AlterMundi in Argentina and Zenzeleni in South Africa, are inspirational models where the communities operate their own networks and provide connectivity to themselves. They have both inspired and supported us in bringing these alternatives to other countries like Colombia, where my organisation, Colnodo, is replicating them in different scenarios in rural areas.These initiatives have raised new challenges, especially in relation to guaranteeing access to spectrum in order to carry out the deployment of these community networks. This is especially important for initiatives such as cellular community networks, where the spectrum is usually assigned to telecommunications companies that maintain a monopoly on communications without leaving space for these alternatives.

The work of APC and its members in this field has initiated high-level discussions to ensure that global policies recognise these initiatives as viable and reliable solutions to connect these communities.

Having APC as a platform to influence access-related policies is essential for connecting these communities and for other APC programmes to have a greater impact in these communities, which historically have been denied the benefits of connectivity.

Great challenges await us, but it is very satisfying for me to see the evolution of our organisation and network adapting to new challenges and continuing to work on providing people with a free and open internet for all.

Julián Casasbuenas G.
Former Chair of the APC Board of Directors from 2014 to 2017

2017 was a year of transition in APC. When APC’s former executive director Anriette Esterhuysen told APC’s management team that she was resigning, we couldn’t quite believe it. Over the last 16 years, Anriette had been the heart of APC, and it was difficult to imagine APC without her.

Anriette first joined APC when the Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT) – where she was executive director – became an APC member organisation in 1993. She was elected to APC’s board of directors as a representative of SANGONeT in 1997.

When Anriette was first appointed as APC’s executive director in 2000, there were five staff members. By 2017, we had 37 staff members living in 17 countries. In 2000, APC had 22 members organisations; in 2017, we had 58 organisational members active in 61 countries. On behalf of the APC staff, I’d like to thank Anriette for her leadership in shaping APC into the respected and influential global organisation and network that it is today.

Since I took over as executive director of APC, I have often been asked how I am finding this new position. Leadership change in any organisation creates uncertainty, so I focused my attention on two things that I felt provided continuity at a time of uncertainty and transition: the APC network and APC staff.

In August, we brought together all our organisational members and staff to talk about the network’s strategic direction, celebrate our collective work, and elect APC’s board of directors. Global meetings of APC members happen only every three years. During these meetings, APC members decide on the direction APC takes and the priorities we commit to as a network.

Our meeting in August 2017 was the 13th member meeting since APC was formed in 1990. We chose the elephant – revered for its strength, wisdom, longevity and cooperative spirit, values that embody the close-knit APC community – as the key element in the design of all the materials used for the meeting. This spirit was evident throughout the meeting, but two moments stood out me.

The first moment was hearing stories about the work of each APC member. We heard many inspiring stories and one story stuck with me. Arun of SPACE Kerala showed us emails from a severely autistic girl asking him questions about how the internet works. SPACE Kerala promotes open source software and undertakes digital literacy for poor communities in the state of Kerala in India.

The emails he showed us were written by the girl’s mother, who learned how to use email through SPACE Kerala’s work. Her daughter only communicates with her through touch – pressing into her mother’s skin to tell her something. The mother then translates this touch language into emails to Arun and vice versa. It was a powerful reminder of how access can make a profound difference in someone’s life.

The second moment happened on the last day of the meeting when APC members elected a new board of directors for a three-year term. The board of directors is APC’s primary governing body. It makes policy and management decisions, and works with the executive director and staff to implement APC’s strategic priorities. There were only seven positions open and 19 candidates from member organisations stood for the elections, ready to serve on the network’s board. To me, this was an indication of commitment and ownership on the part of our members. Not only does APC have a strong and competent new board, there are also 12 other member representatives who can step up when needed.

In 2017, the APC staff and management team also spent time together to work more on our internal organisational health. We started this process two years ago, and the leadership transition in APC created an opportunity and a sense of urgency to address our own challenges. We tackled work culture, workload, structures and processes, support and self-care, and agency and decision making. Our conversations were not easy, but we came out of them with a shared responsibility for sustaining an organisation with the energy and power needed to feel fulfilled and healthy in our work and to get us closer to the impact we want to make.

I am very proud of the contributions that the combined work of the APC staff and our members and partners have made this year in our priority areas: affordable and sustainable access, promotion of internet-related rights, creating a feminist internet, transparent and democratic internet governance, and building capacity among civil society organisations and human rights defenders in internet use and development. I invite you to read the stories in this report that make our work come to life.

APC’s year of transition has been a year of learning and change for all of us. We’ve had a good year, made possible by the spirit, hard work and commitment of the APC staff, the engagement of our members, the guidance of our board of directors, and the support of our partners.

I look forward to what next year brings.

Chat Garcia Ramilo
Executive Director of APC

Access. Rights. A Feminist Internet. Governance. Use and Development. Community. (Or FAIR and GUD-C, as I affectionately acronymised them for myself.) These are the pillars of APC’s strategic plan. These are the areas on which APC focused most intensely as it went about its work this year, of ensuring a free and open internet and a world that is more just, more equal. In every possible way.

But there’s one key letter missing from this big picture – T. This was a year of Transitioning. This was a hugely significant moment of transition for APC as its leadership changed hands.

I want to begin this introduction by doing two things. On behalf of our member network, I profusely and lovingly thank Anriette Esterhuysen, who stepped down as executive director this year, after growing APC from its modest roots to a global force that is loved, admired and respected. And on behalf of all of us, I open our collective arms to Chat Garcia Ramilo, APC’s new executive director, and give her a big, welcoming hug. May the force be with you, Chat!

I became the chair of the APC board halfway through the year at the global APC members’ meeting held in Ithala, South Africa, in August. Why did I run for the board elections? Mainly out of a sense of deep identification with APC. My work at Point of View, the non-profit I run in India, straddles three domains – gender, sexuality, technology – and I’m part of many movements. And part of the cracks and spaces in between these movements, always trying to connect the dots, just like APC does at the global level.

So much meaning derives from APC’s work at these intersections. When APC works on Access, it’s both about connecting the unconnected, and about visibilising the digital gender divide and the causes of women’s rights violations. It’s not either/or. It’s both.APC’s work on Rights is framed the same way: as a spectrum of rights, which means that a successful APC policy push is not just a win for digital rights – it’s often a win for women’s rights, as gender issues are made visible in policy spaces. Be it at the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, the Human Rights Council, or while developing Internet Universality Indicators. When APC talks of free expression, it’s a big, rainbow-coloured umbrella… that includes sexual expression as political speech. Like any other speech. And of course, without access, free expression and rights, how can we even conceive of building a Feminist Internet?

This intersectional lens was in full view in APC’s work on Governance this year, right from initiatives to build civil society capacities to participate in internet governance to the Internet Governance Forum itself. It was also in Use and Development, which enabled hundreds of activists all around the world to tell their stories digitally… and to remain digitally secure.

An organisation does not survive and grow for 25+ years without a lot of help, and a network does not thrive and flourish without growing membership. The APC Community has grown steadily over the years; at the end of 2017, we were 58 organisational members and 28 individual members active in 74 countries. And we’re still growing…

In closing this edition, I want to thank APC’s founders, staff, consultants, members and everyone else who has been or is part of APC, or who has supported our work in one way or another. Let’s continue changing the world… together.

Bishakha Datta
Chair of the APC Board of Directors