Apologies for missing the last couple of weeks due to a fractured left arm which gradually on the mend.   Since the last roundup  on April 10th we have had 14 new members which is great. Kabissa has now passed the 1200 mark and still growing. I am  also pleased to see the steady growth in numbers of members taking advantage of K2's blogging feature.  Please remember there is no limit to the number of people in your organisation who can blog and also note you can post separately to "Events" which will appear on the Kabissa calender.

Four organisations have joined Kabissa this week, two from the Cameroons, two involved in rural conservation and one Arts and human rights group.  Rural-Urban Development and Education Agency  is a youth centered NGO  based in Cameroon that aims to address the educational and employment needs of young people by providing community based teachers and creative teaching methods and urban community projects.  

Kabissa has set itself a huge challenge in deciding to create the new online community with the aim of bringing together over a thousand civil society organisations across the continent. Whereas previously members were "passive users", K2 requires a signifianct change in the way members think of and use the site as now they are being asked to actively participate in the development of Kabissa. In other words the members and users move from being in a passive user state to being active contributors through creating content and building relationhships with each other on a geographical or thematic basis.

[Image: iMedExchange]

Our job at Kabissa is to facilitate and support members. One way of doing that is to keep everyone up to date with what is happening on the site so we have decided to have a weekly roundup of K2 which includes brief profiles of new members, highlight from the weeks most interesting blog posts and news of any changes to the site and to Kabissa in general.

The good news for Kabissa is that we have 60 new members since January this year which brings our membership to over 1000. Our aim is to try and get at least 5% of these to become actively involved with K2 by the end of the year and build on that and hope there will be some knock on effect and members encourage each other to join in.

Excellent tips on good web design which we at Kabissa  will be looking at too.

Addax (http://addax.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/cigaretets-for-the- nigerian-children-des-cigarettes-pour-les-enfants-nigerians/) comments in this Pambazuka News update on a disturbing report from the Times (UK) on Phillip Morris and British American Tabacco (BAT) targeting yourng and children in
Nigeria to become smokers.