I'm forwarding this on behalf of Melissa Hagemann, a member of the Foundation's Advisory Board.

Angela

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Melissa Hagemann MHagemann@sorosny.org Date: Nov 30, 2007 6:31 AM

Hi folks,

To help support the further development of a movement around open educational resources, many of us have come together to develop the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. Today we did a soft launch of the site, http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/. We hope that the declaration will serve as a rallying point for the development of open educational resources as the Budapest Open Access Initiative did for open access to research literature.

The declaration comes out of a meeting the Shuttleworth Foundation and OSI organized in Cape Town in September. Many friends of the Wikimedia Foundation have been involved in the development of the declaration - Jimmy and Heather joined us in Cape Town and Peter Suber added his own magic touch to the collaborative writing of the declaration.

The declaration will be fully launched in January. Over the next six weeks, we are collecting signatures of support. So if you are interested in the further development of open educational resources, please complete this form, http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/sign-the-declaration so that you can be listed as an early signatory to the declaration. We are also collecting signatures from high profile individuals and organizations to sign on before the launch. If you have suggestions for these, please email me directly.

Thanks for your help!

Cheers, Melissa