From: MUBARAK.JAMAL@MTN-HOME.VA.GOV
Subject: Introduction to Parwaaz, Part II
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 23:48:00 GMT


|TAB||TAB|INTRODUCTION, PART II
 
Assalaamo alaikum,
 
Parwaaz has rapidly developed a number of contacts in Pakistan for
helping people with information and for implementing its own projects.
Here are only some of the examples:

1.|TAB|YCP (Youth Conservation Program) is a group of NED University 
|TAB|students and professors in Karachi.  YCP acts as a local hub in
|TAB|Karachi for gathering technical queries and forwarding them to
|TAB|us.  Apart from answering these queries, Parwaaz has also been
|TAB|involved with YCP in some of their own projects.  For
|TAB|example, YCP is currently involved in developing a feasible
|TAB|windmill for the purpose of power generation in rural areas.
|TAB|Parwaaz has supplied considerable information for this project.

|TAB|We have also sent two modems to NED University to enable them
|TAB|to get on the net.  Insha'allah NED will soon be on uunet.

2.|TAB|There is a Telebit T-2500 modem destined for BCCI-FAST ICS Institute
|TAB|in Karachi.  It will be delivered to them in a few weeks.  And
|TAB|then they will begin active communication with us through
|TAB|e-mail.  Through this communication we will try to establish
|TAB|a book repository at ICS that will serve as a model for future
|TAB|repositories.  The idea is to have books sent to Pakistan by people
|TAB|who are planning to go to Pakistan in the near future.  Since the
|TAB|books will reach before the person, the repositories will have 
|TAB|adequate time to evaluate/copy them.  Once the person in question 
|TAB|reaches Pakistan, he can get the books back.

3.|TAB|SAHICS in Lahore is one of our recent contacts.  We are currently
|TAB|in the process of shipping the code of Minix, an operating system,
|TAB|to them.  Along with Minix we are sending them the complete
|TAB|code of two other public domain Unix systems (for 386/486),
|TAB|Linux and 386 BSD.  But that is not all, we have been requested
|TAB|a lot of other public domain software from them and the
|TAB|pipeline is building up.  Apart from software, we are also
|TAB|sending hardware like ethernet adaptors and TNC packet radio
|TAB|adapters to them.
 
4.|TAB|We have established communication with UET in Lahore.  We will
|TAB|shortly be engaged in efforts to upgrade their Digital Computer
|TAB|Lab.
 
5.|TAB|Our members are going to establish further contacts in December as
|TAB|they go back to Pakistan.  We will soon have contacts in other
|TAB|universities and will encourage them to become accessible through
|TAB|computer networks.  We will similarly contact some firms involved
|TAB|in electrical and computer engineering.

6.|TAB|Our oldest contact in Pakistan is HEJRI.  The first modem to reach
|TAB|them, a Telebit T-2500, was actually sent by one of our members.  In 
|TAB|addition, we have been involved in market research for them for  
|TAB|buying other modems.
 
The above does not, by any means, cover all the projects that we have
done so far.  The list is long, but our intent here is not to go
through each and every item on it.  We only want to illustrate how
meaningful work can be done, and how we can help in alleviating
some of the information and resource constraints that the technical 
community is faced with in Pakistan.  This is something that we can   
do easily and more efficiently than can be done from Pakistan, even
if considerable money is spent in the process.

Parwaaz wants to organize a more meaningful and broad based transfer of
information to Pakistan.  Our projects so far are not even a drop in
the ocean.  They only serve to make us more humble and dedicated to our
homeland.

You can all help in this endeavor.  But this is a difficult path.  It
needs perseverance and organization.  It needs quality instead of
quantity, both in terms of the projects and the members. 

We hope that we have been able to convey ourselves to you.

Khuda Hafiz,
 
Jamal Mubarak
E-mail: mubarak.jamal@mtn-home.va.gov