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The Afnic Foundation announces its 2020 winners promoting an inclusive Internet accessible to all

Home > Observatory and resources > News > The Afnic Foundation announces its 2020 winners promoting an inclusive Internet accessible to all
11/12/2020

For the first time, the Afnic Foundation has launched two calls for proposals this year, including one aimed at players in the digital mediation sector. Of a total of 402 applications received and examined, the Afnic Foundation selected 68 with a total allocated budget of over €1 million, including €321,000 for workshops to support members of the public in their digital learning.

Strong trends

A number of strong trends emerged this year among the 68 winners announced in 2020 by the Afnic Foundation for Digital Solidarity, targeting specific audiences or projects dealing with lifestyles, work and consumption:

  • Projects aimed at supporting young people, and lower secondary school pupils in particular, with the aim of raising their awareness of the media and information, as was the case with the Éducation aux Médias project, and the workshops instigated by Ateliers du Pôle Multimédia designed to introduce young people to audio and visual technologies. The Collégiens Écocitoyens initiative based in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, which enables young people to open up more to the world around them and to other cultures and to practice their language skills, is also noteworthy
  • Projects aimed at a primarily female audience, such as Ell’Oweb, which aims to raise awareness of the digital sphere among upper secondary school girls in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region with a view to promoting professional diversity in a sector of activity that represents significant employment potential but that is poorly gender-balanced, E-Mujeres, which is trialling and developing a safe and secure space for women who have been victims of prostitution and their children in Martinique, a project based on developing their digital skills in order to encourage socio-professional integration, and Act for Mumz in the Ile-de-France region, which aims to develop a mutual support platform for women from 4 political districts of the city
  • Projects designed to improve day-to-day life: inclusive projects launched by Apaj’Echange, which aims to create a cooperative residential exchange platform for people with disabilities to be able to take holidays, and Signe à l’œil, which seeks to develop an online directory of French songs performed through a combination of sign language and dance over the course of 3 years. On a slightly different note, Une Planète dans mon assiette aims to compile the ‘Wikipedia of food’ by identifying the ecological footprint of a product by simply scanning it
  • Last but not least, it is important to mention that the Afnic Foundation has also supported 7 local initiatives aimed at reducing the divides and inequalities that the COVID-19 crisis in particular has highlighted.

A new resource for project leaders

The Afnic Foundation is working on a new service to help project leaders develop and structure their projects in the form of the ‘Ressourcerie’. This dedicated area of the Foundation’s website will provide access to various services, including the following:

  • A list of accessible training courses and services
  • A section containing various documentation, such as statutory provisions and new government directives
  • Access to all of the projects supported by the Foundation, with a detailed description of the progress of each project written by the winner, including the obstacles encountered and the solutions implemented, and offering them the possibility of networking to exchange ideas

This ambitious service is currently under development and should be available online by the end of the year.

Since it was founded in 2015, the Afnic Foundation has received nearly 1,700 applications and allocated just over €4.9 million to 244 projects. This financial support for the development of an inclusive Internet is only possible thanks to Afnic, which donates 90% of its .fr profits to the cause. Details of all Afnic Foundation winners can be found here.

 

About the Afnic Foundation

The Afnic Foundation for Digital Solidarity was set up in April 2015 by Afnic. It aims to support the development of an inclusive Internet, as well as improving training and awareness of its uses by supporting local and formative digital solidarity initiatives and research projects in the field of digital solidarity. Following 5 calls for proposals, the Afnic Foundation has to date contributed €3.7 million to 244 projects. For further information, please visit www.fondation-afnic.fr.

About Afnic

Afnic is the acronym for Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération, the French Network Information Centre. The registry has been appointed by the French government to manage domain names under the .fr Top Level Domain. Afnic also manages the .re (Reunion Island), .pm (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon), .tf (French Southern and Antarctic Territories), .wf (Wallis and Futuna) and .yt (Mayotte) French Overseas TLDs.

In addition to managing French TLDs, Afnic’s role is part of a wider public interest mission, which is to contribute on a daily basis, thanks to the efforts of its teams and its members, to a secure and stable internet, open to innovation and in which the French internet community plays a leading role. As part of that mission, Afnic, a non-profit organization, has committed to devoting 11% of its Revenues from managing .fr Top Level Domain to actions of general interest, in particular by transferring €1.3 million each year to the Afnic Foundation for Digital Solidarity.
Afnic is also the back-end registry for the companies as well as local and regional authorities that have chosen to have their own TLD, such as .paris, .bzh, .alsace, .corsica, .mma, .ovh, .leclerc and .sncf.

Established in 1997 and based in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Afnic currently has nearly 90 employees.