Community Creativity For Development - CC4D

🌬️ Living in a dusty area? When was the last time you cleaned your cooling fan or AC?

In dusty environments, cooling appliances can quickly accumulate dust and dirt on their filters, blades/propellers, fans vents, coils, and other components. Over time, this buildup can reduce airflow, make the appliance work harder, increase energy consumption, and shorten its lifespan.

But it’s not only your appliance that is affected—your health can be affected too.

A dusty and poorly maintained fan or AC can contribute to poor indoor air quality by circulating accumulated dust and other particles. For people with allergies, asthma, or other respiratory sensitivities, this may aggravate symptoms.

Dust buildup can therefore:
🔧 Reduce cooling performance
⚡ Increase energy consumption
🛠️ Cause premature breakdowns
🌬️ Affect indoor air quality
🤧 Aggravate allergies and respiratory symptoms

Repair Day is at the corner. 17.10.2026.

Before replacing your fan or AC because it is “not working well,” take a moment to ask:

👉 When was it last cleaned?
👉 Are the filters blocked with dust?
👉 Is the fan running smoothly?
👉 Has it been properly maintained?

💡 Maintenance Reminder: Don’t wait until your cooling appliance breaks down. Make regular cleaning and maintenance part of your routine—especially when living in a dusty environment.

A simple cleaning and regular maintenance can make a big difference—not only to the performance and lifespan of your appliance, but also to the quality of the air around you.

At a time when electronic waste is increasing rapidly, maintaining and repairing the devices we already own is an important part of building a more sustainable and circular economy. ♻️🔧

Repair. Maintain. Reuse. Don’t replace too quickly.

Did you know? 💡

When your device starts running slowly or freezing, it doesn’t always mean you need to buy a new one. Sometimes, it simply needs a little care and maintenance. 🔧💻📱

Routine and preventive maintenance can help keep our devices working efficiently, extend their lifespan, reduce e-waste, and save money.

Let’s embrace care, repair, and maintenance of our devices—just as we take care of ourselves. ❤️🌍

Don’t replace it. Repair it. Maintain it. Keep it working!

We’re getting ready to celebrate Repair Day — marking 10 years of celebrating repair, reuse, and sustainability! 🔧🌍

Are you planning a Repair Café event this year? We’d love to hear about it!

Let’s celebrate 10 years of Repair Day by taking action: fix something broken, maintain something that still works, and give it a longer life. 🛠️♻️

Repair, reuse, and keep things in use for longer! 💚

A New Tool for Innovation and Creativity: 3D Printer Donation 🎉

We are thrilled to share an exciting milestone for CC4D: we have received a donation of a Prusa 3D printer.

This valuable technology will enhance our makerspace initiatives by enabling hands-on learning, prototyping, creativity, and locally driven solutions. As we continue promoting repair culture and e-waste upcycling, digital skills development, and sustainable innovation, access to tools like 3D printers opens new possibilities for young innovators and communities to design, experiment, and create.

We are deeply grateful to Dr. Mylon and Sebastien Martinerie for making this possible and for supporting our journey toward strengthening maker and repair ecosystems. We also appreciate the Makerspaces Africa community for their continued encouragement and col-laboration in advancing innovation across the continent.

This partnership represents more than just a piece of technology—it is an investment in knowledge sharing, creativity, and the power of communities to build their own solutions.

Together, we are expanding the possibilities of what communities can repair, create, and innovate.



Sergio Almerares Saad Chinoy Pete Mylon STEMpower South Sudan

Power of Repair!

Earlier this year, CC4D's session, "Repair and Maintenance as a Critical Need in Humanitarian Contexts," was accepted for presentation at the ICT4D Conference in Nairobi.

For us, this was recognition that locally led innovation and the experiences of refugee and host communities belong in global conversations. Yet there was one challenge—we lacked the funding to cover conference registration and travel.

Like many community-led organizations, we had the expertise but not the means to be present.

At a critical moment, Catholic Relief Service (CRS) connected us with NetHope. During our conversations, our work on repair and maintenance stood out. We shared why keeping digital devices functional is essential for humanitarian operations, digital inclusion, education, livelihoods, and community resilience.

Those discussions led to something far greater than conference support. Through the programme, CC4D became an official member of the NetHope community, opening the door to collaboration with a global network committed to strengthening local organizations.

Participating in ICT4D Nairobi was an important milestone. Even more meaningful was meeting members of the NetHope team a few months later during the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva. Our conversations evolved from repair and localisation to exploring how artificial intelligence can responsibly strengthen community-led organizations and expand opportunities for young people in South Sudan and Uganda.

This journey reinforced a lesson we will never forget: meaningful partnerships begin with listening, grow through trust, and create lasting impact.

Our sincere appreciation goes to Nora Lindström from Catholic Relief Services for making the connection and to NetHope for believing and trusting that local organizations should not only have a seat at the table but also the support to lead, innovate, and shape the future.

This is only the beginning, and we look forward to building a future where repair is recognized as an essential component in sustaining the tech gains.

Empowering Refugee Leaders Through Digital Skills for Stronger Communities

Access to digital skills is no longer a luxury—it's essential for effective leadership, communication, and community development

We are proud to launch a two-month Digital Literacy Training Programme for 15 refugee community leaders in Eden Zone, Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement, Uganda.

The training is designed to equip refugee leaders with practical digital skills that will strengthen community coordination, improve communication with humanitarian actors, enhance access to online information and services, and support more efficient service delivery for refugees.

This initiative reflects our commitment to localization, ensuring that refugee leaders have the knowledge and tools to lead solutions from within their own communities. By investing in local leadership and digital inclusion, we are helping build resilient communities while contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Together, we can create lasting impact by ensuring that no one is left behind in the digital age.

📢
We invite humanitarian organizations, development partners, donors, technology companies, and individuals to partner with CC4D in expanding digital literacy opportunities for refugees and host communities.

Together, we can empower more community leaders, bridge the digital divide, and strengthen community-led solutions that transform lives.
To learn more about our work or explore partnership opportunities, please get in touch with us.



Internet Society NetHope UNHCR Uganda UNHCR South Sudan UNDP South Sudan

The Three Dimensions of Geneva AI Week: Reflections from the Intersection of AI Governance
Earlier this month, Our Executive Director, Mathew Dukson, had the privilege of participating in the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva, Switzerland 🇨🇭. His participation represented more than attendance at an international conference—it was an opportunity to elevate the voices of communities in South Sudan, Uganda, and the broader Global South, which are too often absent from discussions shaping the future of technology.

Throughout Geneva AI Week, three distinct perspectives on artificial intelligence emerged.

At AI for Good, innovation took center stage, highlighting AI's potential to transform healthcare, education, agriculture, and humanitarian response. While these advances were encouraging, they also underscored an important gap: limited attention to AI's environmental footprint, electronic waste, and the communities that supply the minerals powering the digital economy.

Inside the Palais des Nations (UN HQ), discussions focused on governance, human rights, accountability, and responsible AI. These conversations reflected a growing global commitment to ensuring that AI serves humanity, while also raising important questions about whether governance frameworks can evolve as quickly as the technologies they seek to regulate.

Outside the official venues, grassroots activists, researchers, refugees, and former technology workers shared powerful testimonies about the realities of AI today—from surveillance and conflict to inequality and environmental degradation. Their voices reminded us that for many communities, AI's impacts are not future possibilities; they are present-day realities.

For CC4D, one message became clear: AI governance must go beyond algorithms. It must also address sustainable digital infrastructure, repairability, circular economy principles, responsible e-waste management, and ensure that marginalized communities are active partners in shaping AI policies—not merely beneficiaries of them.

As the global community looks ahead to the 2027 UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in the United States, we hope the issues raised in Geneva—including environmental sustainability, the Right to Repair, circular economy, and meaningful representation of the Global South, refugees, migrants, youth, and marginalized communities—will move from the margins to the center of the conversation.

At CC4D, we remain committed to ensuring that technology advances social justice, environmental sustainability, and digital inclusion for everyone.

We extend our sincere appreciation to the Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBS) and the Migration and Tech Monitor (MTM) for making this opportunity possible and to the United Nations for convening a truly global dialogue on AI governance.


The Restart Project National Communication Authority - NCA UNHCR South Sudan STEMpower South Sudan NetHope Internet Society UNHCR Uganda

Strengthening Information Integrity: CC4D at UNHCR Yumbe! 🙌

​We are thrilled to share that the CC4D team has just successfully completed an intensive 3-day training on Strengthening Information Integrity, Misinformation, Disinformation and Hate Speech (MDH) Response, and Multimedia Communication!

The workshop was organized by the UNHCR Yumbe Sub-Office and brought together Refugee-Led organisations to tackle one of the digital age's biggest challenges. In humanitarian and community settings, false rumors and hate speech can disrupt peace and erode trust.

Over the course of three dynamic days, our team dived deep into:
✅ Identifying & Countering MDH: Spotting the difference between accidental misinformation and intentional disinformation.
✅ Information Integrity Ecosystems: Developing proactive community frameworks to protect social cohesion.
✅ Multimedia Communication: Mastering impactful digital storytelling and content creation to amplify factual, positive narratives.

As an organization dedicated to digital literacy, creativity, and community resilience, these skills are invaluable. We are excited to integrate these toolkits into our ongoing grassroots programs to foster safer, better-informed, and more unified communities.

A huge thank you to the UNHCR Yumbe Sub-Office for organizing this timely and crucial training! Let’s keep championing truth and accuracy. 🤝✨

​ DigitalLiteracy CommunityResilience UgandaRefugeeResponse

What if repairing a broken device could also help repair communities?

Last week, CC4D hosted another Repair Café workshop at our Bright MakerSpace in Yei, South Sudan, bringing together more than 70 students from EPC Nehemiah Academy Secondary School for a hands-on learning experience in repair, care, and maintenance for electronics, people and the planet.

The students explored the growing challenge of electronic waste by learning what e-waste is, its sources, the environmental and health risks of improper disposal, and practical approaches to responsible e-waste management. They also gained foundational skills in electronics repair, including identifying electronic components, diagnosing faults, disassembling and reassembling devices, using multimeters, and soldering.

For us, these workshops are about much more than technical training. They demonstrate how repair can become a pathway to youth employment, climate action, digital inclusion, and peacebuilding. In communities recovering from conflict, repair spaces create opportunities for young people to learn together, solve problems collaboratively, reduce waste, and develop skills that strengthen both livelihoods and community resilience.

Every repaired device reduces electronic waste. Every young person trained increases the capacity of the community to repair rather than discard. Every workshop sparks connection, bridges societal division and helps nurture a new generation of environmentally responsible innovators and repair practitioners.

We are grateful to the UMI Fund for supporting this initiative. As we continue to expand our work across South Sudan and refugee-hosting communities in Uganda, we welcome partnerships with donors, educational institutions, governments, NGOs, private sector organizations, and the global repair movement to scale this model and reach thousands more young people.

Together, we can transform repair into a powerful tool for sustainability, economic opportunity, and lasting peace.



Access to skills and Knowledge Network ASKnet The WEEE Centre UNICEF South Sudan STEMpower South Sudan UNHCR Uganda UNHCR South Sudan Global Innovation Gathering Global Youth Mobilization

📷 Rickado OV Appset

🔧 Consider doing preventive maintenance to avoid costly repairs and unexpected breakdowns.
Many devices and machines fail not because they are old, but because small issues are ignored until they become major problems. Regular cleaning, inspection, software updates, and timely replacement of worn-out parts can extend the lifespan of your equipment, improve performance, and save money.
Remember: Prevention is always cheaper than repair.