The problem

Most low to middle income countries (LMIC) currently have to cope with a wide range of health problems that interfere with their future economic development. Public health is a major priority, especially the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and common infectious diseases, as well as the emergence of chronic disease epidemics. A trained workforce of health professionals is essential, but local universities being vastly oversubscribed for face to face courses and fees for overseas universities, including e-learning distance programmes, are higher than can be afforded by most potential students in

Worldwide causes of infant mortality

these countries. Internet-based e-learning has the exciting potential to deliver high quality learning resources anytime and anywhere, and although access is by no means universal it is improving quickly.

The inspiration

The open source software movement provides an inspiration for an affordable and credible solution - Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS . Many hundreds of individuals have contributed to the development of high quality software which is freely available on the Internet.

In the education field, there are now parallel developments of Open Educational Resources (OER), with an ever expanding range of high quality on line resources that are freely available through the Internet. (http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=Main_Page).

Our solution

Develop educational context around freely available open educational resources on the Internet – Peoples-uni.org. This is an open activity, to be developed in partnership across the global and digital divides. We are in development phase, and hope eventually to m ove towards the establishment of a ‘ Peoples Open Access University’. The Peoples Open Access Education Initiative was registered as the Peoples-uni.org by Richard Heller in January 2007.

Organisation

We do not plan to have a centralised organisational structure and are calling on individuals and organisations to undertake various of the required tasks. We are calling this ‘Volunteersourcing’ – a variant of ‘Crowdsourcing’. While many of these tasks might be performed by volunteers, others will require funding (such as accreditation).

UK Management Group

This group deals with the day-to-day management issues, facilitates the development and delivery of education, monitors quality and ensures effective allocation of any funds.

Click here to see the UK Management Group members

International Advisory Group

This group advises on educational activities and their scope, sets priorities and advocates on behalf of the Peoples-uni.

Click here to see the International Advisory Group members

Please go to the Join Us section of the site and get involved - All are welcome.