links for 2008-05-06

• Media & Entertainment For Good - WikiForGood

taking back the cognitive surplus (from the TV)

• Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody

I love this speech.  It is about how we are living in an era of surplus leisure time that is being gobbled by the TV, and he argues that we are now using wikis and social media and taking back some of this time for social benefit…. 

“And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we’re talking about. It’s so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let’s say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That’s about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 100 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation…

“I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.”

living in a culture of the written word

I took the subway uptown today with my new intern from Kenya, who is one awesome young lady.  I had stuffed an article in my purse, three pages about a trip of US church leaders in Sudan.  I skimmed it on the S train, it took me about 5 minutes.  She was reading over my shoulder, and it took her all the way to 116th, about 20 minutes.  Now she is an articulate youth leader, brave to come over to our crazy country, and btw, Kenya is a British colony so her English is arguably better than mine.  

But it got me thinking.  In the field of development, progress is marked in thick reports from the UN and NGOs.   In my world, development studies is a race to read as much research as possible and then produce your own.  This is a huge cultural divide.  I have copiously read and reported since the age of five, yet she could get up and give a brilliant speech off the top of her head whereas I would melt into a pool of shy.  

But this is a story about what cultures have to learn from each other. She can read all my favorite NGO reports and I can listen to her and absorb some of the oral tradition, which we have moved away from in this country.   If only we could get this kind of cultural exchange to happen at a grand scale.  

having coffee with Darfur refugee camp, thanks to Google Earth

A huge tent camp all around the city of Zalingei, (West Darfur) Sudan.

Google Earth certainly allows this blog to reach a whole new level. If I am interested in a certain spot, I can just check it out. As far as usability goes, as a person sitting in a Manhattan apartment using a one-year-old Mac, I had no problem. I felt like Superwoman as I pressed the + and - keys to zoom in and out. And even though I do know where Darfur is on the world map, it is still a big place to find a refugee camp, so the search worked well to get me there. However, one does need a bit of a virtual tour guide in order to tell what is going on. This is what google provides:

“The current open conflict in Darfur began in 2003. This conflict, with its associated destruction of villages and livelihoods, led to widespread displacement, significantly exacerbating existing problems caused by a lack of development and minimal access to basic services. It is currently estimated that more than 2 million people have been displaced, with a total over 3.6 million people in need of assistance.”

So, the release of this application was picked up in a lot of the media, the headlines read, “Google, UN put Refugees on the Map”. I hope this application will give more people means to learn about crisis; the new capabilities of the application allow for UN and NGO staff to upload images and stories about the camp. But at this point the application does not allow you to watch in real time a village being raided or a woman being raped or a child dying of starvation…. and I am thinking about the right to be on the map as a human right we take for granted…

I spoke with a chief UN human rights official yesterday and he said there is widespread awareness about genocide in Darfur in the U.S., but what is still needed is a sophisticated analysis. The solution is not to run in with guns blazing, and the conflict it is not about Arabs killing black Africans, but about water, land, tribe and incredible brutality and cunning from Khartoum government. He said that while there is a lot of diplomatic pressure going on from the UN, people to people diplomacy is still very much needed.

By people to people diplomacy, I think he means using specific connections, like the Anglican church in the US connecting with their Bishops in Sudan and then coming home to tell the US congressmen — as well as engage with their pension funds, companies listed by the Sudan Divestment Taskforce which are profiting from China oil revenues… But at this point stopping this war is really about political will of nations. Google seems to be able to do anything they put their minds to…. I hope this helps.

links for 2008-04-12

• UNICEF’s ‘Story Jam’ looks to expand outlets for youth communication

Rwanda Slideshow

some closing reflections on the Rwanda youth gathering and the digital divide

I am back in the US and missing Africa, what an amazing experience. This was my trip across the digital divide, which really ended up reinforcing how strong it still is.

I came back with one less suitcase, leaving behind a used lap top, a flash drive, two Flip videos, two digital recorders and a printer/scanner/copier. I am convinced that technology is what we rich country folks should lug over in our suitcases. I would have brought a bluetooth headset for Pastor John if I had known how much work he does on the phone while driving around the country in his green truck. His office is in his cell phone.

I shared my hotel with a bunch of Americans from Rick Warren’s Saddle Back Church, an evangelical mega-church in Southern California. After training 300 pastors, they were in town to officially certify that Rwanda is a “Purpose-driven Country”. Warren’s best-seller, A Purpose Driven Life is translated into Kinyarwandan and a lot of Rwandans have read the book. Anyhow, all the gung-ho Saddlebackers had brought a ton of soccer balls and Christian books.

The conference youth media team was earnest, an but as genius as they were, they faced a lot of obstacles. They watched me take notes on my lap top with amazement as my fingers flew over the keys… most of them type one finger at a time. I watched two of them work for thirty minutes on a paragraph for their blog to see the internet connection reload and lose their content. But they have made a cool photo diary.

A journalist from New Times, the Rwandan English paper, came to see what we were up to. He did several interviews, then went on his way. I asked him if he had an email address so we could send him our press updates, and he said he didn’t have one.

Finally on my last day in Kenya, I showed George, our media team leader this blog, and it literally took his computer 10 minutes to load it! This makes me really sad, because George is so tech-savvy, and he is going to edit all our video, but how can he do this with such a slow internet speed? He says he has a faster connection at home, especially at night when people are not using it. I have not posted pictures yet because even though the internet seemed pretty quick, uploading photos in Africa overwhelmed the internet connection even at my muzungu guest house.

So, my conclusion about communication for development is that it still must happen face to face. The Rwandan youth conference was a success because when you bring young people together, they have a good time. And what better way to build bridges across ethnic, geographic, economic and other divisions, then by spending a few days together singing, praying, talking about your country and learning from each other?

After spending a few days in Kenya before flying back, I have become convinced the young people of Kenya need their own summit. Like the rest of Kenya, I am afraid the power share of President Kibaki and Odinga is just too fragile — and there is so much at stake for this nation of 40 million people. The post-election violence in Kenya after Christmas was done largely by young men and broke along tribal lines. Now when I talk to Kenyans they mention their tribes in a way like I never heard before. These divisions are dangerous if they are allowed to settle. If I can round up $25,000 USD I will be planning a Kenyan youth peace summit and we will invite youth from across the country from different tribes…

the power of testimony in Rwanda

Testimony is given while media team films both speaker and translator.

Yesterday we heard a testimony from a man who participated in the Rwandan genocide. He killed the parents of his neighbors, and now he lives with them side by side. After spending several years in jail, the government let him go on the condition that he would publicly confess his crimes and encourage others to turn themselves in. Fourteen years after the genocide, thousands of genocidiers are living in exile in the bush in Congo or hiding in Europe.

There was a lot lost from his testimony in translation. I think our translator, an orphan herself, was unable to fully repeat the words he was saying. He told us that after he was released from jail, he lived in the bush for months until his neighbors came and told him to come back. They even gave him food for his children. He was a small, sad looking man in a red flannel shirt, and while he was speaking some people got up and left the room. He was 16 when he committed these crimes. After he gave his talk he said, “raise your hand if you forgive me.” Most of the room raised their hand.

The day before this we traveled to two memorial sites. The first was a church in Ntarama that holds the remains of 5,000 people that were hiding in the church when a grenade was thrown through the wall. Their blood-stained clothes are kept in neat piles on the pews and there are rows of skulls. Some of the Rwandan girls started crying so hard they were hyperventilating, one girl vomited… So this is healing?

Just a few kilometers down the road from Ntarama is a larger site called Nyamata, one of the most famous sites of the genocide. It is a Catholic church that was run by a Belgian priest and Rwandan nuns who were later some of the first people tried for war crimes. They told the Tutsis, you can come here, you will be safe, and so 10,000 people gathered there. The altar is kept as it was, the white cloth covered in faded blood. Behind the church you can walk into the sarcophagus and look at rows and rows of skulls, many of them cracked from machete blows.

As an American, it is impossible to truly understand how Rwandans must feel seeing this. These are not my people; I am not looking at a memorial site in Washington State for a massacre that happened when I was 14 years-old. Many of the Rwandans I went with were seeing the sites for the first time. These skulls were their families. One young man told me, I lost my father, but I don’t know what happened to him, I am always looking for him everywhere I go.

These churches, like this man, are living testimonies to what took place. It is important to speak directly about what happened. Though the genocide is everywhere in this country, it is not often openly discussed. For this man to give testimony, however difficult, is to create a space where the genocide is discussed and denounced. They tell me there are no longer Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, there are only Rwandans.

A lesson in infrastructure, high transportation costs in Rwanda

I remember learning the word infrastructure in social studies class, the definition my teacher gave was that it meant transportation and communication. After some time here in Rwanda, I am realizing that the majority of the country’s spending money is going to pay for getting from place to place.

Providing money for transportation is a key principle for youth participation in any process, but in this case we would have no youth conference if we did not pay for peoples transport– and that includes the speakers. I reimbursed Pastor John for a tank of gas for his car today and it was $100 USD. We think the oil crisis is hurting people in the US– the price of gas here is incredible. I am paying some of the participants the equivalent of $10 a day to travel by bus to and from the site. Otherwise $10 can get you pretty far here– in rural areas it is the amount of a micro-finance loan. Our total transportation costs for this meeting, for both reimbursing participants and managing logistics are nearly going to equate our housing costs.

On the flip side, driving is in Rwanda is pleasant because there are few cars and the roads are well maintained. But this morning I woke in a panic because I was late and all the traffic was stopped from 8-12pm for the national monthly clean-up day. You are not allowed to drive because you are supposed to clean up your neighborhood. Rene told me one time his cousin was on a way to a wedding and the police stopped them. They had to get out of the car, take off their suit jackets and roll up their sleeves to start fixing the road.

Second to transport costs are cell phones. To use your cell phone you have to buy mobile credits, and depending on who you are calling they can run out pretty quick. Especially if you are coordinating a conference you are on the phone all day.

I really think that if you ran the numbers the majority of this country’s cash-in-hand is going to getting around and talking to people; something we in the West do without second thought. We live with the inherent assumption that we can go anywhere and say anything at anytime. We say time is money. Well, in Africa it seems all the time in the world is being spent just getting from place to place.

a song and a powerpoint for reconciliation

The youth conference I am coordinating in Rwanda is in full swing and these youth are blowing me away. I arrived at the conference center this morning and 80 of them were standing in rows at their conference table singing. We have so many resources in our audience, we just have to ask, who can lead a song? and an entire choir comes up and sings in harmony. I don’t know a lot about music but there is something about an African choir that the West can’t even touch.

This was the first day of the conference, so I was worried everything would go wrong, but the it was a great day. We have more than 80 young people from Rwanda, DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia and USA. Somehow they came, across language barriers and borders, and the way the information traveled is a fascinating exercise in word of mouth and community networks, but more on that later. After the singing, a young person from each church and country came up and told about their local youth projects and challenges. Everything was translated to English or Kinyarwandan on the spot. Did I mention that this portion of the schedule was unplanned?

Our speaker on peace and reconciliation came with his own powerpoint machine during lunchtime. While I was pleased to see he brought his machine, I was worried about the power supply, the screen, the technology…so many things could fail. Well, now I understand whey a trainer on peace and reconciliation needs a power point. When you talk about a genocide, the pictures of the people who have been killed, bodies stacked in the road, have so much more power than any words. The electricity held throughout, but a tremendous downpour — the kind that is inches of water in minutes– started mid-presentation and rain came through the roof and onto his laptop.

Unfortunately the conference center promised us both internet and a sound system and failed to deliver on both. So our youth media team can’t blog live as planned, instead they have to shuttle in the evening downpour to a hotel so they can upload pictures on their blog. (You can have a sneak peak as they just get started.) But they are determined, so they will stop at nothing now that they have a platform.

They are cutting videos on the new Flip Video, a camera with a USB port on its side, cute as an Ipod, super easy to use, and takes double AA batteries for an hour of footage. Interestingly, the youth media team of the conference is almost all women. Now this doesn’t surprise me as my co-students in Strategic Communications are almost all female, but we had to struggle to make sure that this conference had gender balance. When you make a call for youth leaders in Africa you will get all men if you’re not careful. In Africa, communications is still a male profession, so building a youth media movement could really do a lot to empower women, as well as promote literacy and civic participation.

There is something really happening here, so stay tuned…