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Milestones In Kidlink's History

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Art by Kyrrill Lugovsky, Russia

1990   May 25: Kidlink's activities start using the SciLink conferencing system in Toronto, Canada flag. Participants living outside Canada, call in through the Tymnet packet network to participate in the discussions. Founders are Odd de Presno (Norway flag), Nancy Stefanik (USA flag), Knut Braatane (Norway flag), and Jonn Ord, Canada flag.
June 7: the first responses to Kidlink's four questions ever were submitted by 14 year old Krystal Belchior of Fenwick, Ontario, Canada flag.
October 23: operations are moved onto the Internet. Kidlink's conferences get a new home at North Dakota State University's data center in the US flag.
1991 War in the Middle East. The Kidcafe kids take part in the conflict through a friend living in a kibbutz outside Tel Aviv (Israel). Conference redistribution centers around the world starts carrying Kidlink's network dialog. The Kidlink Gallery of Computer Art opens.
1992 Management gets professional. The private Kidcore mailing list opens in October. A Kidleader conference for adult co-ordinators opens. Kidlink gets its own IRC server for chats.
Growth pains. New mailing lists open: The Kidproj (November) and Kidforum (December).
1993 President Clinton of the United States flag asks for and is granted permission to say "thank you" to the kids in Kidcafe. His mail appears on the 2nd of March. This is his first known appearance in a public online conference.
Kidlink gets its own hardware and software. The IBM RT computer is installed in the Duquesne University (USA flag) computer center. The University sponsors Kidlink's connection to the Internet. In May, Kidlink information is made available in Gopher space (predecessor to the web).
Odd de Presno donates his right to the Kidlink name to a new non-profit organization named The Kidlink Society flag. On March 6, a Board is elected with members from all corners of the world.
English is no longer enough. Kidlink starts in Brazil flag, and a Kidleader-Portuguese conference opens on July 7. Spanish and Japanese language conferences open in September, and Scandinavian languages (Nordic) in October.
1994 The traffic in the English language KIDCAFE grows out of proportions, and the forum is split into three conferences.
1995 A support organization is built, and Kidlink grows into a matrix organization. Hebrew language activities opens.
The first face-to-face management meeting takes place in Arendal, Norway flag.
The World Wide Web comes to Kidlink when L-Soft Corp. flag donates an Internet server as an Award for Student Internet Innovations.
1996 March 6: Kidlink's computer center moves to the premises of the University of Cincinnati, USA flag.
The Stiftelsen Kidlink foundation is created to deal with the organization's financial matters.
The first Kidlink House opens in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil flag) in support of poor kids without access to computers and the Internet.
The second face-to-face management meeting takes place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil flag, with 35 participants from around the world. A major public conference is arranged in parallel. Mailing lists in German and Turkish languages open.
1997 The Icelandic language Kidleader mailing list opens.
June: Kidlink receives a second Pentium computer from L-Soft Corp. flag.
October: The third face-to-face management meeting takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark flag, with 40 participants from around the world. Following the internal meeting, we arranged a public conference in cooperation with the local Ministry of Education. In parallel, a major three-day Kidlink workshop took place in Panama.
Kidlink now has 38 public mailing lists administered by an organization of some 150 volunteers from 23 countries. The work is co-ordinated through 43 private mailing list on Kidlink's own host. In September, there were 13,000 subscriptions to Kidlink's public lists from 6,800 unique email addresses.
The Kidlink Institute is established.
1998 January: Development of the eight-month, multi-lingual Who-Am-I? program starts. The program is built on the best of what Kidlink has done over the years.
The Italian language, Danish language, and Norwegian language Kidleader lists opens.
May: A response to Kidlink's four question is submitted by a native indian of a tribe called Fulni-o. His name is Seito, which means "bird" in his the language of his tribe: Yath. His tribe lives in Aguas Belas, Pernambuco, Brazil.
August: Kidlink's managers from around the world met in Lima (Peru) for training and public conferencing. They came from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Panamá, Perú, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Slovenia, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay.
The Kidlink Museum opens in Oslo, Norway.
September: The first teachers start introducing Who-Am-I? in their classes. October: The Slovenian language Kidleader list opens.
1999 May: The Latin American Who-Am-I? started.
The King of Sweden handed Kidlink the Bangemann Challenge Award.

Beginning of the KidFamilia project for senior citizens.
September: Kidlink's age policy was changed to "Kidlink- global networking for youth through secondary school"
October: Kidlink's language area management met in Puerto Rico for planning, and present Kidlink to local teachers in cooperation with the local Ministry of Education.
2000 Kidlink is ten years old.

Competing with 600 projects world-wide, Kidlink wins the Global Junior Challenge 1st prize within "Educational projects for users up to 18 years old."
Activities open in Chinese, Romanian, and Catalan.
2001 Children's Art from the Visamo Earthquake Relief Camp in India.

The World Bank sponsors our Brazilian KHouse activities with US$ 134,000 (infoDev Project Number: 349-990310). Their infoDev eXchange Newsletter had an article on Kidlink and our work.

September: Kidlink managers from around the world met in Norway for training and public conferencing. Participants came from Brazil, France, Ghana, Guatemala, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Perú, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, United States, and Uruguay.

KidSpace is born.
2002 An international team of kids and adults are preparing a new Kidlink newsletter, headed by 14 year young Daniel Basilio Romero from Perú.

Kidlink receives The Cyber Golden Hearts Award by the Special Interest Group Telelearning (SIGTel) of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), USA.

The Who-Am-I? program's lesson plans made available in standard Arabic.
2003 Key Kidlink information and lesson plans available in Russian. Russian language support organization established.

Activities start at the new KHouses in La Paz, Bolivia .

The major multilingual My Future Job and Making our world better educational programs are developed, and start up.
2004 Kidlink's KHouses in Brazil won the first price for "digital inclusion"
2005 Kidlink receives funding from Norad to introduce our educational life skills training programs in Jordan and Nepal
A new art gallery infrastructure introduced.
2006 New services: KidCom, a new platform for collaboration between children, a private webmail service (KidMail), and an expanded registration system. KidCom will gradually replace the use of mailing lists. Kidlink receives funding from Norad to introduce educational life skills training programs in Jordan .
2007 Kidlink's KidSpace publishing platform moved to a new location at the University of Cincinnati , and a brand new version of KidSpace with enhanced features was made available.

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