Community networks newsletter: Community-centred connectivity bridging digital inclusion and environmental justice

Community-centred connectivity initiatives differ from traditional internet providers in many ways. Their mission goes beyond access – they start from the realities, needs, plans and dreams of local people. One principle that also sets them apart, though, is their commitment to caring for the environment. Across the world, communities are demonstrating how technology can serve both people and nature, as well as warning of the impacts of technology that need to be prevented. Digital tools have a harmful environmental impact and at the same time, they are tools to defend the territories, monitor forests and rivers, and share local communities’ visions and stories with the world.

The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the largest global United Nations forum on climate change. This year’s edition will be hosted by Brazil in Belém, Pará, in the heart of the Amazon. This major event addresses climate change from a wide range of perspectives. Within this broad agenda, connectivity is gaining increasing relevance, addressing how digital connectivity influences social and environmental justice, and how access to connectivity serves as a strategic resource for knowing, learning and caring for the environment, communities and territories. 

Welcome to the 86th monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks and community-based initiatives.

Routing for Communities podcast

With two seasons on the air, our Routing for Communities podcast invites you to learn more from the first season’s 12 episodes featuring experiences of digital inclusion all around the world and the questions proposed by the four episodes of the second season, to reflect on the challenges that the community-centred connectivity movement is facing. 

Find in some of these episodes revealing examples of how communities address the forefront of climate change and defend their territories by strategic use of technology and connectivity. Like the Amadiba community in South Africa and their fight to defend their land, coast and people, through access to the internet, or the challenge of preserving territories, traditions and natural resources faced by Ciptagelar Village in West Java or the Jxa'h Wejxia Casil Community Network, the network of the wind, of the Nasa Indigenous Nation in Colombia. Enjoy diving into these episodes, led by the voices of communities. 

Remember that you can find all the episodes of the Routing for Communities podcast here and that they are also available on Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Spotify. 

Community networks news and stories

• The community of the village of Pulau Taliabu, on a remote island in eastern Indonesia, took charge of its connectivity needs and built its own internet service. With the support of Common Room Network Foundation through the Sekolah Internet Komunitas programme, a door was opened for local residents to learn how to build and manage their own internet infrastructure. Read more.
• A great opportunity for celebrations is the 10th anniversary of the work done by TIC A.C. to promote community telecommunication in Mexico. In an online meeting with the team and communities, they reminisced about the key milestone of the story that led them to obtain the first Indigenous social concession for telecommunications. Read their reflection here. [Available in Spanish.]
• From Colombia, Colnodo and the National School of Community Networks hosted a Camp on Community Communication for the Protection of Life in the Territories. People from different departments of Colombia shared a week of meeting and learning in El Carmen de Bolívar. “An experience that reminded me that communication is like a river: when it flows from the territories, it nourishes life, memory and resistance." Watch this photo gallery. [Available in Spanish.]
• The Instituto Federal do Sertão Pernambucano (IFSertão-PE) in Brazil hosted a three-day hackathon, Hackasertão, bringing together students and members of quilombola, Indigenous and small farming communities to introduce the first steps for installing a community network and consider responses to the many challenges that can arise in this process. [Available in English and in Portuguese.]
• For people in the Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda, the internet represents a tool for education, connection and rebuilding lives, thanks to a digital literacy initiative supported by 48percent.org. But a new challenge has surfaced: how to stay safe online. A new project was designed to build on the foundations laid by previous efforts. Read more.
• The Internet Society is inviting participation in the definition of its Special Interest Groups (SIG) for 2026-2027. The five topics with the most votes received will become the next official SIGs. “Community Networks and Community Infrastructures” is one of the options proposed. Find out more about this initiative and submit your vote here. 

Gendered experiences

• Women from the Amazon region, building their own networks of connectivity and solidarity, gathered in the "We in the Network" meeting, held by the LocNet initiative and the Transfeminist Network of Digital Care. The meeting brought together representatives from various regions of Brazil and leaders from the Digital Forest Community Network and the Amazon School of Community Networks, accompanied by Proyecto Saude y Algeria and DW Akademie. Read more. [Available in Portuguese.]
• The Feminist Network on Artificial Intelligence in Latin America and the Caribbean has launched a call for concept notes for projects that research and innovate in artificial intelligence based on human rights and centred on communities in the region. The initiative aims to promote an ecosystem based on feminist principles to dismantle systematic inequalities and improve the collective well-being of marginalised communities. Read more. [Available in Portuguese, Spanish and English.]

Enabling policy and regulation

• A call to action to unlock investment for community connectivity was launched at the T20 summit dialogue convened in Cape Town. The side event brought together key voices from across the digital inclusion ecosystem, focused on unpacking the context of digital inclusion, learning from community-centred connectivity initiatives and grassroots solutions, assessing policy and regulatory frameworks and exploring innovative community-driven financing models. Read more.
• During the Colombian Internet Governance Forum, the Communications Regulatory Commission and Colnodo held the workshop "Regulating fixed community internet without complications: Resolution 7712", with the aim of sharing information and gathering input on the regulatory framework applicable to recognised community networks in Colombia. Read more. [Available in Spanish.]
• At the launch of the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)’s findings on media coverage of digital public infrastructure (DPI) held in Nairobi, the conversation turned from technical jargon to human impact. Fellows from Burundi, Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, the DRC and South Sudan are reshaping how DPI is reported, understood and governed. Read more.
• The closing session of this year edition of the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) was devoted to a roundtable on “Bridging the Digital Divide: Strategies for Inclusive and Sustainable Connectivity in the Asia-Pacific Region”. Marie Lisa Dacanay, president of the Institute of Social Entrepreneurship of Asia (ISEA), reflected on the social impact of meaningful community-centred connectivity. All the sessions are available here and her contribution can be found here.  

Publications, research and toolkits

• Launched by ARTICLE 19, “The missing link: Reclaiming connectivity through human rights” is a report that calls for a fundamental reorientation of connectivity strategies around human rights rather than market expansion. Among its calls to action, the report highlights the need to “champion the development of a range of different, smaller-scale, and local solutions over one-size-fits-all mass products" and to "prioritise local connectivity solutions, which are more resilient and better serve vulnerable populations." Read more.
• The International Telecommunication Union developed a document for the Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Americas region, that provides key indicators of the state of digital connectivity in the region and also highlights impactful case studies, including the Bootcamp developed in Guatemala in the frame of the learning programme for Indigenous communities. Read more.
• In the article “Beyond the hardware: How a software gap is sabotaging the mission to bridge the digital divide”, Keegan White reflects on why the software layer is key to sustainable connectivity solutions. “The path to bridging the digital divide (...) is about designing resilience, true ownership, and long-term viability into the very fabric of these networks,” he said. Read more.
• “Bridging digital gaps in a mobile device age” is a new research study developed by the African Journal of Empirical Research from Ghana contributing to the debate around whether smartphones have rendered community information centres obsolete. The research reveals that the centres aren’t competing with mobile technology, but complementing it in ways that are crucial for equitable development. Read more.

Events

• Learn from the experience of the Global Gathering in Estoril, Portugal in the voice of Tania from Coolab in Brazil, who describes it as an event that “brings together people who believe in human rights, privacy, security and above all, that the internet should be a welcoming place for everyone, not just a giant marketplace grabbing our attention and clicks, monetising our habits and emotions.” Read more.
• The Free Silicon Foundation and the NGI0 Consortium are co-organising a community workshop on Open Source Chip Design. The workshop will be held online on 3 November from 14 to 16 CET, with free access after registration. Read more.
• The Mozilla Festival 2025 will be held from 7 to 11 November in Poble Espanyol, near Barcelona, Spain. Read more.
• The COP 30 climate conference is going to take place from 10 to 21 November in Belem, Brazil. The event is going to be covered by an alliance between the LocNet initiative and Rede Wayuri, focusing on the agenda of technology and connectivity related to environmental justice. You can follow this agenda and the coverage here
• The Workshop para América Latina y el Caribe (WALC) will be holding its 28th edition from 10 to 14 November 2025. It includes a module on community networks. Read more. [Available in Spanish.]
• The Community Network Xchange Asia Pacific 2025 will be held on 14 and 15 November 2025 in T-Hub, Hyderabad, India. Read more.
• RightsCon 2026 will be held in Lusaka, Zambia and online on 5-8 May 2026. Read more.

Funding opportunities

• The 100x impact accelerator is a catalytic fund offered to for-profit and non-profit organisations with proven impact models seeking to scale them. The organisations chosen will be accompanied during a 12-week programme, with access to policy makers, evidence-based research and catalytic capital. Social ventures working with underserved communities from Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa are especially encouraged to apply. Applications will be accepted until 10 November. Read more.
• The NGI Zero Commons Fund is open to individuals, SMEs, institutions and collectives for projects aimed at helping to deliver, mature and scale new internet commons across the whole technology spectrum, involving libre silicon, middleware, P2P infrastructure or end-user applications. The application, administration and reporting processes are simple and straightforward. The deadline is 1 December. Read more.
• The WYDE Women’s Leadership Initiative has opened a call for proposals for civil society organisations to expand women's leadership and political participation. With this call, funded by the European Union, the UN Women will support the implementation of the Generation Equality Action Coalition on Feminist Movement’s and Leadership commitments, supporting civil society and women’s rights and young women’s organisations to participate. The submission deadline is 10 November. Read more

Community networks learning repository

This repository is a collective online space to store and exchange resources that can be useful in training processes, focused on materials made for and by community networks.

This month's focus on environmental justice invites to consult resources related to the multiple meeting points of technology and the environment available in our repository, such as a guide developed by Pangea to reduce the environmental impact of email and e-cloud usage, available in Spanish, or a guide for sustainable and innovative power solutions for rural connectivity, developed by the International Telecommunication Union. 

Have you developed any material that focuses on environmental issues from the multiple possible ways in which digital inclusion addresses environmental justice? We invite you to upload them to the learning repository and help us widen it. Remember that contributions in all languages are welcome. 

Find out more!

This newsletter is part of the Local Networks initiative (LocNet), a collective effort led by APC and Rhizomatica in partnership with grassroots communities and support organisations in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. It aims to directly support meaningful community-centred connectivity initiatives, while contributing to an enabling ecosystem for their emergence and growth. 

Previous editions of this newsletter are available here.

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