Greetings all!

Apologies for the n00b and last-minute nature of this submission! Nico just informed me of the proper procedure. I had submitted an earlier draft of this proposal via the ZoomGrants interface on the ISOC website just prior to the original August 10th deadline, but hadn't passed it through the CNSIG chapter first.

The proposal is for financial support for the development of basic mesh routing on disaster.radio hardware. Disaster.Radio is a long-range, low-power, low-bandwidth communications network built on open software and hardware. More info on the project can be found here: https://disaster.radio

We are already in communication with groups across the US as well as organizations in Canada, India, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and New Zealand who are interested in building disaster-resilient communications networks and utilizing the hardware. We've also begun having discussions with some first responder and human rights organizations, such as the Human Rights Foundation. Given the low cost (< $50 USD) and open soft/hardware nature of the project, its potential global impact is clear.

Regarding the project's relationship to community networks, we are in conversations with the folks behind Libre Router about adding a LoRa radio to the next iteration of their open hardware WiFi mesh routers. We plan to deploy disaster.radio nodes (and in truth have already deployed several) in tandem with our community WiFi network here in Oakland, California, and are chatting with multiple other community wireless projects about deploying Disaster.Radio networks for backup, off-grid communications.

Support from the CNSIG would be greatly appreciated! This is an urgent request, as the deadline was evidently today. Gratitude to both Nicos for their efforts to get this pushed to the larger ISOC through the CNSIG! :)

<3