Réseau communautaire Chebucto

A major ongoing project of the Chebucto Community Net is Réseau communautaire Chebucto, its new French language version.

Réseau communautaire Chebucto is much more than a Nova Scotia francophone website. It is a specific implementation of Csuite, providing a fully integrated French-language window onto the Internet. Its multilingual capabilities put powerful tools in the hands of communities around the world to enable them to make better use of information technologies -- in the language of their own choice.

We have a strong commitment in making the world of electronic communication and information available to a wide constituency of people. We have introduced the Internet to about 14,000 local users, host over 200 groups and organizations as Information Providers and have a traffic of almost four million document accesses per month.

CSuite -- the technical, administrative and training infrastructure to run a Community Network -- is an ongoing CCN initiative. It's many strengths include:

It is technically very powerful;
Its components are smoothly and seamlessly integrated;
On both the client and server sides it can run on very low-cost hardware;
It includes very comprehensive help, training and documentation to assist administrators, volunteers and users to use it efficiently and effectively;
It can readily be adapted to run on many language on the same machine;
Its core functionality is available in text-only as well as graphical form, making it suitable for visually-impaired and other disabled people to access the Internet.

Réseau communautaire Chebucto, is both an implementation of the developing CSuite software tools, and an opportunity for francophones in Nova Scotia to build a window onto the Internet -- in their own language.

The CCN is committed to a vision and a program which will enable people and organizations to tell their own stories and convey their own information to the local community, the country and the world in the language of their own choice. We are working to assist them by supplying the tools they need to build for themselves a place on the electronic landscape. The key is to empower people and encourage them to find their own visions and voices.

Information technologies can help break down barriers and build bridges -- but they can also homogenize, lose distinct voices and isolate cultural communities. By building tools which can be tailored to fit cultural and linguistic groups we can help make the global electronic community a richer, more diverse place.

CSuite's has the potential to bring Internet information and technology to Canadians:

with disabilities for whom non-text interfaces pose obstacles.
of diverse linguistic backgrounds
of modest economic means

In the context of continuing discussions on how to make Information technologies available to people in the Developing World, this technology is of consequence. We will be able to make these tools available across the globe; an opportunity for Nova Scotians to make meaningful contributions towards enfranchising global population to electronic information.

The Chebucto Community Net development of CSuite is supported by Industry Canada, Human Resource Development Canada, the Province of Nova Scotia and Dalhousie University.