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Revisiting the topic of Girls and ICTs: Tech Salon Discussions

Posted in children, development, gender, girls, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, participation, protection, youth, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 4, 2010| 1 Comment »

I recently had the honor of leading a group of tech, development and gender folks in a discussion around Girls and ICTs at the Technology Salon.  The conversation revolved around 5 aspects I wrote about in an earlier blog post On Girls and ICTs:

  • Tension between participation and protection
  • Online behavior is an extension of, and a potential amplifier of offline behavior
  • Qualifying the digital divide
  • Girls’ involvement in developing and designing ICT solutions for their own needs
  • Research on Girls and ICTs

Check out the Technology Salon’s page for a round-up of our discussions!

Photo:  Informal evening one-on-one ICT time at a Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM) project workshop in Cameroon.

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Related post on Wait… What?
On Girls and ICTs
Putting Cumbana on the Map:  with Ethics
Being a Girl in Cumbana

Girl Power and the CGI

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On Girls and ICTs

Posted in children, gender, girls, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, participation, protection, social media, youth, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 26, 2010| 7 Comments »

At the Technology Salon hosted by the UN Foundation’s Technology Partnership with Vodafone Foundation on Jan 28, 2010, some folks from the DC area (and beyond) will gather to share experiences around girls and ICTs.

This conversation is an important one, given that gaps exist around discussion, practice and research.  The information and ideas shared at the Technology Salon will feed into the contents of the Girls and ICTs chapter for Plan’s upcoming 2010 “Because I am a Girl” Report (currently in the works).

There are a few points that I hope will be considered in the Technology Salon discussion:

Tension between participation and protection.

There are many examples of ICTs being used for increased participation and connection:  mobile phones for citizen journalism;  Twitter revolution in Iran; girls using mobiles to ask questions about sexuality and to get information to help them improve their sexual and reproductive health; girls married off early or those living in protective societies using mobile phones to maintain contact with friends; new media tools opening up possibilities for youth engagement in important conversations that normally they would be shut out of.

However, due to the very real problems of on-line child pornography, child trafficking, child harassment, and cyber bullying, there is also a strong push for more control, more restrictions on on-line use in the name of protecting children.  The tension between child participation and child protection is a very real one.

As we look at how technology and international development communities can support girls’ development, I hope it’s kept in mind that the more knowledge that girls have about the internet and ICTs in general, the more practical use they are allowed, the more coaching to help them understand implications of their actions, then the better prepared they will be to navigate these realms and to keep themselves safe.  Increasing their knowledge, abilities and desire to protect themselves may be more effective than setting strict external limitations.

Actively engaging girls in this as part of an educational process can be better than restricting their use – and being open to young people’s own ideas and ways of using ICTs is critical.  Adult involvement in this area is important, but it is probably more worthwhile to coach than to control.  Good communication and trust between children, youth and their adult mentors and guides is critical in this process. (Excellent resources on Child Online Protection (COP) for children, youth, educators and parents came out on October 2009 and are well worth the read.)

Online behavior mirrors offline behavior.

I remember getting an obscene phone call when I was around 8 years old.  My mother did not blame the telephone, however. She blamed the pervert that was calling.  She made sure to teach me how to be prepared in case it happened again. She emphasized not giving out information on the phone and hanging up immediately if I felt uncomfortable or didn’t know who was calling.  She did not prohibit me from ever touching the phone again or blame me, but she was vigilant for awhile.

In the same way, new ICTs themselves cannot be blamed for negative and twisted behaviors.  ICTs are tools that exacerbate and extend already existing human behaviors, and the blame lies with those who are using ICTs for child trafficking, cyber bullying and the other evils associated with the internet. It’s important to address underlying behaviors. Research shows that kids who are bullied offline are often also bullied online.  Girls who are vulnerable offline are likely also vulnerable online.  Online is a manifestation of offline, and the root causes of girls’ vulnerabilities online cannot be blamed only on the ICT tools themselves.

I have my own daughter now, and have discussed with her many times how to keep herself safe online and on the phone.  It’s important for her to know this before something happens, not during or after.  She will probably be using the internet and the phone for the rest of her life, so prohibiting them is not an option, and the benefits of using these tools obviously outweigh the risks.  My own involvement and use of social networking sites, texting, etc. is an excellent way for me to know how these sites are used and what security holes there are for my children on the sites. How can parents and teachers in areas with limited use of ICTs be involved and engaged to serve as coaches and leaders in on-line protection together with children?  How can communities help identify existing vulnerabilities in girls (or young people in general) that might manifest themselves online and offer support to prevent exploitation?

Digital gender divide.

There are some amazing examples of ICTs helping women and girls to improve their livelihoods; for example, women selling mobile telephone services; birth attendance being improved by using mobile phones to connect women to midwives, ambulances and other medical services; educational content being  expanded using internet; youth media and youth radio programs bringing girls voices and gender topics into the mix for community discussion and dialogue.

However, in places where boys and men dominate women and girls, boys and men likely also dominate the use of available ICTs.  Men may control the family’s mobile phone and take it with them, or monitor women’s calls. In places where boys are more favored, their confidence to try new things is higher meaning they may rush in to use mobiles, cameras, radio equipment in projects while girls shy back.  In some cases girls report that boys hog and monopolize the computers and equipment, and access is denied.  I’ve seen boys criticize, scorn and ridicule girls who are using equipment for the first time, and girls become too timid to try again.  In many developing countries, just getting girls to attend school is difficult.  If girls are assumed to be less intelligent or less worthy than boys, and their secondary school attendance (where ICT training might be offered) is not a priority, girls will have a very difficult time ever accessing and using ICTs.

Underlying issues surrounding girls’ participation in general need to be addressed.  We need to think about how ICTs can be used to help girls’ inclusion, participation and self esteem increase in general.

Girls involvement in developing and designing ICT solutions for their own needs.

Studies in several countries have shown that girls and boys use technology in different ways and for different things.  What specific ICT needs do underprivileged girls in ‘developing’ countries have? Is anyone asking? What processes or solutions already exist that take girls’ ICT needs into account?  What environments are necessary for girls to engage in defining, deciding and creating ICT solutions? Where are they already engaging, and how can communities, schools, organizations and businesses support and recreate those environments?  How can processes and products be designed together with girls?

Tech is still a field heavily dominated by males.  In the US, for example, some women in tech have pulled together to question this and to advocate for more opportunities for women to break into the male dominated worlds of publication owners, conference speakers, businesses, well known innovators, and “best of” lists.  There have been protests against prominent companies for promoting “Booth Babes” and in one case last year, strippers, at tech conferences.  This brings the question – in places without female tech role models and respectful environments, how can girls see themselves as leaders in this field?

Specific research on girls and ICTs.

There is not a lot of information on the impact of ICTs on the lives of girls in ‘developing’ countries, especially studies that go beyond establishment of computer centers.  There is  anecdotal evidence of positive impact of mobile phones on women. There are studies on the digital gender divide for women; on child trafficking and other negative aspects of the internet; and on use of internet and technology among youth in the US, UK, Australia, etc.  It’s been difficult to find a lot of information on the use of ICTs by girls in the “South.”  It would be interesting for more research to be done on girls and ICTs in the “South” and for some good practices to be shared. Hopefully someone at the Technology Salon will be able to share some insight on this.

Related posts:
An Example of Youth Led Community Change in Mali
Being a Girl in Cumbana
Putting Cumbana on the Map – with Ethics
Breaking it Down: Violence Against Children
Stories that Touch the Heart

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Children in Emergencies: Applying What We Already Know to the Crisis in Haiti

Posted in children, disaster and emergencies, Haiti, participation, protection, smart aid, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 18, 2010| 10 Comments »

In early 2005, following the Tsunami, I collaborated with a cross-section of people at the organization where I work to put together a summary of lessons learned and some short guidelines for working with children and communities in emergencies.

All of us had been directly responsible for supporting and/or coordinating disaster response with communities, staff, local and national governments, international and national NGOs, children, youth, schools and teachers, or some combination of the above, in the countries where we lived and worked.  We discussed preparedness as well as relief and recovery phases. We talked about how child focused community development organizations, like the one where we worked, should look at children’s survival, development, participation and protection in a disaster situation and we created some internal guidelines.

Some of the most important things that stayed with me from the weeks we spent talking with each other, with peer organizations, and with our colleagues who were dealing with the 2004 Tsunami are related to the importance of child participation and protection during emergencies.  These recommendations can be applied now to the crisis in Haiti.

  • Don’t assume children or their families can’t do anything for themselves. Local coping mechanisms are often overlooked and underestimated by central governments or aid organizations, creating unnecessary dependency.  Participating and taking control of their situation can actually help people return to normal sooner. I clearly remember an example of an IDP camp where all the services (food, water) were at first centrally coordinated by the municipal government.  A manager from our organization was able to convince the government to engage camp ‘residents’ and organize children and youth into smaller groups who handled particular responsibilities. Suddenly the trash in the camp was picked up and time spent in the food line went from 2 hours to 20 minutes, tempers lowered and people relaxed a bit and got on with things.  The Children and Participation: Research, Monitoring and Evaluation with Children and Young People by Save the Children is a general guide that can help staff think through and orient participation of children and young people in emergencies.  Child-Oriented Participatory Risk Assessment and Planning (COPRAP): A Toolkit developed by the Center for Disaster Preparedness (CDP) in the Philippines is another excellent resource. Both were adapted and used by Plan during the conflict in Timor Leste, for example.
  • Child protection is critical during an emergency and after. During a disaster the typical social patterns and groupings that protect children may be challenged or broken. Children can be further harmed, abused and exploited by those who take advantage of the chaos.  Unaccompanied children can be preyed on if mechanisms are not established quickly.  Personal information about children is often shared or published widely in the interest of helping find parents or relatives or find missing persons, yet it can also help unscrupulous people to identify unaccompanied children and prey on them, especially now when published on the internet.  Birth registration and restoration of lost identity and other civil registration documents are critical to halt trafficking, as is close coordination among organizations, governments, communities and local agencies/staff.  Community members and the affected population can play a strong role in protecting their children, as can older children themselves.  The Interagency Guiding Principles on Unaccompanied and Separated Children, put together by the International Committee of the Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children UK, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and World Vision, gives an excellent overview of protection.  Further resources are available at Better Care Network’s website which has materials on separated children in emergencies, how to prevent separation through good relief and response efforts, registration, documentation and tracing, emergency care arrangements, verification and family reunification.
  • Unaccompanied children should not be given up for foreign adoption during the emergency phase. Experience in many past emergencies and conflicts has shown that this is just not the way to go.  In the emergency phase there is no way to ascertain which children are orphans with no other family at all, versus children who might be orphaned but have family somewhere who could take them in.  Taking children out of the country to feed them without a long-term, sustainable plan for them can end up being more complex than finding a way to feed and care for them in country.  Supporting removal of children from their own country during a time of upheaval can also engender a negative reaction among the affected population, who may come to see every external face that comes into the community or camp as someone coming to steal their children.  Interim and emergency care should be consistent with the long-term goal of family reunification.  More background on this can be found at the International Foster Care Association’s website.
  • Participation and protection go hand in hand. The greater the amount of knowledge and ownership that children, youth and their families and communities have, the safer they will be and the sooner they will recover. When the affected people have more input in the relief, recovery and reconstruction, efforts are more successful.  This means linking and coordinating with existing community organizations and structures, local government mechanisms, local non-governmental organizations.  Though it may appear that everything is wiped out in a major disaster, leaders will emerge and regroup.  Plan’s publication “After the Cameras have Gone:  Children in Disasters” offers some examples and insights on protection and participation in disaster situations.
  • Report ethically. The media will undoubtedly look for the ‘best’ story in the interest of raising the most funds possible for the emergency.  In media-speak, unfortunately, that often means the hardest hitting story, the most emotional story, and some journalists/media folks will go extremely far to get it.  However, journalists and agencies bringing journalists to affected communities should obviously not further harm children or take advantage of affected persons in their drive to get the best story.  Journalists should not ask children to relive traumatic experiences or to make them tell stories that upset them just to get a shot of a child crying.  The golden rule applies – how would you like it if that were you or your child?  Children or other community members may be too polite or unsure of whether they can say ‘no’ to a journalist, especially if that journalist is foreign or comes with an aid agency or entity that is linked with emergency aid.  Those working regularly with children and their families should ensure them that they can refuse to talk, they can halt an interview, or not have their picture taken. Local staff managing media visits should feel empowered to intervene on behalf of children in these cases. UNICEF’s “Child Rights and the Media” Guidelines for Journalists and Media Professionals, published by the International Federation of Journalists, gives a background and guide for ethical reporting on children in general.  These guidelines include things like striving for sensitivity when reporting on issues involving children and avoiding use of stereotypes and sensational presentation to promote journalistic material involving children, and they should apply in emergency situations as well.

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Related posts on Wait…. What?
Child Protection:  from Emergency Response to a Sustainable Mechanism

Will Haitian youth go missing again?


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An Example of Youth-Led Community Change in Mali

Posted in development, Mali, participation, protection, YETAM, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 11, 2010| 3 Comments »

For the past couple years, I’ve been supporting the Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM) project in 6 African countries. One of the best things about being involved in the project is the opportunity to work with some incredible people who are developing the program strategies and implementing YETAM on the ground.  Bedo, the child media program coordinator in Plan Mali, is one of those people I’ve been lucky enough to work with.  He’s kind, gentle, thoughtful and soft spoken yet solid in his opinions and knowledge. His face totally lights up when he’s working with the youth. He has clear vision and gets things done, writes excellent reports, and isn’t afraid to clarify things if he’s not sure he’s understood correctly.  It’s been a real pleasure working with him. On Friday, Bedo told me about some of the short-term positive results that the Mali team is seeing in the YETAM program there, which I’ll summarize below. Photo: Bedo in December 2008 at the Social Media for Social Change Workshop in Kenya.

YETAM
The YETAM project aims to help youth develop their skills to communicate, educate and advocate at local, national, and global levels about issues impacting on their lives using the arts, traditional media, and new media tools.The project methodology consists of hands-on workshops and activities where youth can improve their communication and analytical skills in order to effectively raise their viewpoints and enter into dialogue with families, peers, community members, decision makers, and the general public. Youth go through a process of participatory mapping, discussions to prioritize their key themes, topics or issues. Then they learn to use arts and media to get their messages across to those that they want to engage in helping them find solutions. To date the project is being implemented in 6 countries in Africa (Senegal, Mali, Cameroon, Rwanda, Kenya and Mozambique).

YETAM in Mali
In Mali, around 60 children and youth in a community in the Kati District have been involved in the YETAM project for about a year and a half so far.  In an initial workshop, the youth raised a number of issues through participatory mapping. They researched, investigated and developed opinions on these issues further through song, poetry, theater, photo and video, and later in the process, prioritized their most important issues:

· many children do not have birth certificates
· rural exodus
· violence at school
· excision (female genital cutting).

Integrating YETAM into school curriculum
Following the prioritization of their topics, youth began an education effort around the 4 themes with the local population and local authorities from their village and surrounding villages. As part of this effort, six school teachers were appointed by local school authorities to support the youth and supervise extracurricular activities around the youths’ 4 themes. They were trained by local consultants and Plan Mali staff on participatory methodologies using arts and media as participation tools.

During this training, teachers learned to adjust their teaching styles and to address the 4 topics not as lessons taught in the classroom, but as information sharing and advocacy topics through drawings, poetry, crafts, dance, and theater. New students joined the small arts groups according to the type of activity that they were interested in.  Students who had been involved longer supervised and trained newer students and helped integrate the program within the school.

In addition to the arts, youth and adults worked together on several short drama films. One of these was about female circumcision. It discusses the medical complications of circumcision in a married woman during her 1st birth. The complications were due to excision, done in infancy, and resulted in vesico-vaginal fistula. Rejected at first by her husband, the woman is eventually accepted after the husband’s becomes aware of the existence of appropriate care (free in Mali) and the commitment made between spouses at marriage.

Engaging the public and local authorities through arts and media
Through the training workshops and the production of the different arts and media materials, youth were able to form their own opinions, messages and ideas for solutions to the issues that they had prioritized.  They organized a public event in the community where they performed their drama, songs and poetry pieces, showed their film, and held a panel with local authorities to discuss how to improve the four areas that they had identified.  Photo:  youth performing a drama piece in the village.

Short term results to build upon
 According to Bedo, “Integrating the YETAM methodology with the school environment enabled teachers to learn to address and manage issues with children and youth in a participatory way. The education methods have changed and the student / teacher relationships have become less tense, especially when it comes to discussing subjects such as violence at school or practice of female circumcision.”

Bedo explained that “the introduction of the ‘violence in school’ theme by the students initially caused some frustration among teachers. At first, they felt directly targeted. But when we integrated the teachers into the process, their frustration dissolved and trust began to grow between students and teachers because teachers are discovering another way to teach and discuss sensitive issues – they are behaving as coaches.”  Bedo also said that since the discussions took place at the school, the education authorities have become more interested in the topics and the project.

“At the community event,” said Bedo, “the mayor declared that the council was taking all steps to ensure that all children have birth certificates.  He also addressed the migration of young people from the rural to the urban areas, saying that one of the main reasons is lack of employment. He promised to create jobs to reduce the mass exodus of young people.” Photo: Children interviewing local authorities.

One of the most extraordinary things that happened as a result of the youth’s education and advocacy, according to Bedo, was that “the village chief also made a pronouncement….  He announced that ‘The practice of female circumcision is part of our traditions. As it has adverse consequences on the health of women, I have decided to end female circumcision in the village.’”

Teachers are engaged
 Teachers have been happy with the new ways of teaching and the integration of the YETAM project within their school curriculum. One teacher told Bedo that “there have been developments in many areas, especially in the areas that teachers and students developed together – birth registration, rural-urban migration, female circumcision and violence at school.”

The teacher explained that the youths’ messages have extended to parents and those who practice these phenomena. “Those who practice circumcision have pledged they will stop it. Corporal punishment is now prohibited by school rules, because we now know that violence undermines the intelligence of the child. The teachers have agreed to end it. They are ready to make every effort to pass the message of awareness among their colleagues so that together we can make every effort to end school violence….”

Youth see concrete results
Participating children also commented that they think that there have been improvements due to the project’s integration into the school. One 14 year old participant in the project said “With this new formula of YETAM, the suffering of children through corporal punishment in schools and the harmful practice of female circumcision has decreased. Before, we children, we could not stand before the public and parents to discuss the subject of female circumcision, but now we can do it. This has greatly reduced the practice of female circumcision. In our village, many people practiced circumcision, but now they say they will stop because they have learned from our messages about the harm it causes.“

Another participant, who is 12 years old, commented that “with YETAM, teachers have ceased to beat us in school. Many of our schoolmates have their birth certificates. We are noticing an improvement in our situation.“

Next steps
Bedo says that given the positive impact so far of the project, they will ask school authorities to institutionalize an annual special day for each of the 4 topics.  They will continue to support the work that the youth are doing and try to involve more youth, teachers, community volunteers and surrounding villages in this type of project.  Plan Mali also has plans to conduct a participatory assessment with stakeholders to evaluate the project so far and learn how to improve it.

Within the next month or so, the overall project website will be complete, and the maps, art work and videos of all 6 participating countries will be uploaded so that youth can connect with their peers in Africa as well as share ideas with youth in non-African countries.  A curriculum for teachers and youth groups based on the arts and media work that the youth have done around their priority topics is in the works and will be available for schools in the participating countries.


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Is This Map Better than That Map?

Posted in development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mapping, participation, random, musing or confusing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 16, 2009| 11 Comments »

I come up against a nagging question when I’m thinking about mapping, when I’m talking about the projects I’m involved in, or when I’m working directly with staff and youth in rural communities using participatory mapping methodologies….

Why is this kind of map:

(source:  MapKibera, on Wikipedia)

better than this kind of map?

(Source:  Plan project in Kwale, Kenya)

Well… is it actually better?  And if it is better, when is it better, for whom and why?

I understand how useful mapping information is for big picture decision making, trend spotting and knowledge sharing at different levels.  Mapping in various forms is incredibly useful for program and advocacy work, and there are many examples of how crowd sourcing, digital mapping, and information geo-visualization can be done successfully (mapping stockouts, elections monitoring, human rights incident reporting, crisis management, public health). The potential is huge and exciting.

But when I’m sitting around with a group of people in a rural community without many services, it can be pretty hard to remember or to explain the benefits of digital mapping over low tech map making. Why should people make a digital map if they only have sporadic electricity and internet access (if at all) and not many smart phones.  How will they access that digital map on a regular basis once they make it?  Does the fact that they could make a digital map, necessarily mean that they should?

I guess my key concern is around how digital mapping is directly useful for the folks who are inputting the information, building the map.  The “what’s in it for them” question.

As I was pondering this nagging question, @NiJeL_mapping posted something on Twitter that caught my eye and helped spur along the idea of working through these thoughts.  He was at the Mobile Data for Social Action in the MidEast conference, hosted by UNICEF Innovations and MobileActive.  He tweeted:  “what data are we going to collect, how will we collect it, and from whom?” Then he tweeted:  “Again, the push for technology w/o any knowledge of the intended outcome is frustrating” And a last tweet “overhearing whispers about how we need to focus on the technology, but impossible w/o knowing info to collect”.  This really reminded me that you need to have clear objectives and reasons for collecting data before you decide what cool new technology will be used to do it.  A few days ago I read JD’s blog post giving an overview of the whole conference. The key point for me was that the ‘target’ population delegation “felt overwhelmed by the host of tools and projects presented to them and were unsure how any of this could benefit them”. Luckily, he said, the conference organizers realized this and quickly altered the course of the event.

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Well, if you have ever asked yourself a question, it’s pretty likely that someone else has asked it too, and you can find some answers online. So I went digging around for thoughts from 4 initiatives that I’ve been following over the past year or so: Ushahidi, MapKibera, Wikimapa, and now NiJeL too.

In very quick summary, Ushahidi is often (but not exclusively) used as a crisis mapping tool for rapid crowd sourced information, decision making, and trend analysis. Map Kibera and Wikimapa both use mapping and user-generated media for social inclusion, community voice, community media and community planning. NiJeL works with participatory mapping, bringing it to the web for a variety of geo-visualization uses such as planning, resource allocation, impact visualization and advocacy.

Mine must be not be a unique query, because I found that Erica from Map Kibera answered it pretty directly a couple weeks ago in a blog post called Maps and the Media “…the question about benefit to those who aren’t online misses the point. The digital divide is a fact and needs to be addressed, but when it comes to community information there is also a need for expression outward and collaboration within Kibera. Something like the Kibera Journal or Pamoja FM allows Kibera to talk to itself, while putting facts and stories online allows it to speak to the rest of the world (including wired Nairobi, politicians, national press).”

The objectives of Map Kibera seem similar to those of the YETAM project, the initiative that has taken up most of my work hours over the past couple years. YETAM’s  main goals are engaging youth in the local development process and helping them develop the skills and tools to communicate and advocate for their rights and their ideas with local, national and global audiences.  The project starts off with map making to visualize community profile, community history, community resources, and risks to child rights and protection. Group discussions ensue, issues are prioritized by the youth, and they then create art and media around those issues.
The arts and media materials that youth produce throughout the project are shared with community members, district officials and national authorities to generate dialogue. They’re also plotted onto a digital version of their map and uploaded to the web for the global audience.

Since the local audience is the main one for the media and arts that youth produce during YETAM project activities, followed by district, national and global audiences, it would seem then that the same is true for the map. It must first speak to the local audience, to the community.  It should be first useful to users and producers of the information, as a learning/discussion tool and as a decision making tool, and secondly be useful to a national and then a global audience. Perhaps this will be the case for many of the initiatives that Plan supports and facilitates, given Plan’s child-centered community develop approach and the fact that we use participatory mapping methodologies in our community work all the time. So we need to find a way for the hand-drawn map to be transformed into a digital map (this is what we’ve been doing up to now in the YETAM project), or find a way to make a digital map attractive and useful to local people. Or we could also keep doing both the low-tech and the digital versions.

[Update:  “Paper rocks!”  Mikel from Map Kibera (read his comment below) shared some additional tools that Map Kibera uses to ensure that information collected is available in the community.  One is called Walking Papers.  It is a paper based GPS where you print the map, re-draw it or add details, scan the new version and it automatically geo-rectifies the paper.  They will also be printing and distributing paper maps, and considering forums around the paper maps to increase participation from people who don’t use computers.  Also Mikel commented that drawn maps like the one in the image above can be stored and/or made available to the community using Map Warper.  Here you scan and upload a map, set control points, and then get a geo-rectified version for use online.  Excellent.  This gets better all the time.  :-)]

The Wikimapa Brazil project (paraphrasing from their website) aims to promote social inclusion using virtual and mobile mapping in low-income areas and slums, since available mapping services have not offered information from these marginalized areas.  The project aims to democratize access to information and raise low-income youth’s social participation from simple consumers of information to providers of information and change agents promoting local development and broadening perspectives and creating new cultural and geographical reference points.  In this case, the project goals are similar to YETAM and Map Kibera, but the project is primarily aimed at reducing marginalization and exclusion within available mapping services.  Therefore it seems relevant that on-line mapping is chosen as the mapping methodology.  It may also be the case that residents in the project area have easy access to internet, meaning they would be able to continually use and benefit from the on-line maps.

Patrick Meier from Ushahidi and the Harvard Humanitarian Institute talks specifically about the concepts of participatory mapping, social mapping and crowd feeding during this 30 min video. He comments that the information that’s collected via “crowd sourcing” needs to go right back to ‘the crowd’ who provided it (crowd feeding).  One way that Ushahidi is doing this in communities that do not have regular access to internet is by allowing people to subscribe to SMS alerts when a crisis event hits a particular area where they have a special interest.  Another way to ensure that map makers have information returned to them, he says, is to use transparencies in a manual approach to GIS where information is made more compelling by laying thematic transparent layers over a base map to show dynamic changes and trends.

Patrick points to Tactical Technology Collective’s Maps for Advocacy booklet which documents a number of different mapping techniques and mapping projects and how they have been used for advocacy.  So, I would conclude that in the case of Ushahidi and crisis mapping to see trends in time and space, to have immediate and up to date information, and to manage a broad set of information for crisis decision making, it also is logical that an online map is the primary mapping methodology.  In this case, the information is crowd sourced, so it comes from many, and it’s processed and aggregated on Ushahidi to go back to many.  Because the information in a crisis situation is changing rapidly, it would be difficult to use a static map, a hand drawn map or one that is updated less frequently.

In the case of Plan, as part of the Violence Against Children (VAC) project we are planning to pilot incident reporting by SMS of violence against children and subsequent mapping of the situation in order to raise awareness among families and community members, and to advocate to local, national and global authorities to uphold their responsibilities and promises in this aspect.  The question here will be how to make both crowd sourcing and crowd feeding something that is easily accessible by the participating youth and communities as well as to the other audiences in order to have the desired impact and reach the desired outcomes. The participating youth have already been trained on violence against children (VAC), its causes and effects, and ways to advocate around it.  Now the key will be training them on the technology so that they can discover and design ways to use it  to meet their goals.  A key point will be evaluating whether the outcome is a reduction in VAC.

So in conclusion I would have to say that one map is not better than the other map.  They are both amazing  tools and need to be selected depending on the situation. There is no one size fits all. It goes back to the point of having defined objectives and outcomes for the initiative, knowing what information will be collected, why, with whom, by whom, and for whom first, analyzing the local context as part of that process, knowing about what tools exist and finding the right tool/technology/information management process for the goals that people want to reach based on the context. It’s also about keeping the end-user in mind, and ensuring that those who are producing information have access to that information. I think I will have to keep my question in mind at all times, actually.
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Mobiles to teach real-world statistics?

Posted in development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, Mozambique, participation, YETAM, tagged , , , , , , on November 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Saturday, was the last day of the 2-week Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM) workshop with the youth.  Each of the sub-groups had the task of prioritizing 2-3 areas that they wanted to focus on over the next 6 months and developing a basic plan. The plans included their focus issues, analysis of the causes of the issue, what they would do about it using their reinforced media and arts skills, when they would do it, and how they would know that they had achieved their short term goals (indicators). Photo: members of one of the media teams.

Nathalia, age 18, presented for the theater group. “We are going to work more on the issue of devaluation of girls by their parents.  This is caused by the belief that men were made to dominate and women to serve, the idea that girls don’t bring any benefit to their parents, but bring only trouble, and the idea that girls are physically and mentally weak.”

The other 4 groups’ topics are:

· Music/Dance group: children’s rights in general, education as the key to a successful future, the value of local culture and traditions.

· Media group:  disaster risk reduction and risks to youth in the community such as the discotheque, alcohol and drugs, and violence.

· Painting group: child rights in general, drug abuse and protecting children from violence/risk.

· Journalism group: sanitation and hygiene, education.

Mobile data gathering?

The groups will prepare work on these topics and extend their messages out to the school community and the surrounding villages.  To track their progress, they plan to survey audiences that have seen their work (eg., their films, paintings, songs, theater, newsletters, etc).  This made us think about the idea of using mobile phones to do the surveys (Nokia Data Gathering or Frontline SMS Forms, depending on which is more feasible and cost effective).

The youth could create surveys on a few devices, and then go around to survey people who have attended their events or viewed their work and heard their messages.  The youth could then have immediate results by exporting the survey results into excel for analysis.  In the process, the youth can learn about statistics, charts and graphs.  Eventually they could also take surveying to another level, such as looking at behaviors and practices, and use the information to inform the outreach work that they are doing.  Photo:  Thinking about mobiles for more than calls and SMS.

“The kids see charts and graphs sometimes in their books, but they never have a chance to learn what actually goes into making a chart or graph, or to cover anything about statistics.  This would be a fabulous hand-on way to see how data is collected and used for decision making and to measure results,” said Lauren, the Peace Corps volunteer teacher at the school. “It would be great for them to get to see immediate feedback on their own work!”

Feedback from youth

Photo: journalism group shows their newsletter.

At the closing ceremony the youth were sad to go. “This is an opportunity that we had to participate in something that has never happened here at Cumbana,” said one girl.  “I encourage my fellow students here to show through their behavior, actions and their studies this coming year that they are now different.  That they are changed.”  (theater group)

“I never imagined that I could be a painter, but now I have the dream that I can do it.  I am happy because I showed what I’m capable of and I expressed my feelings through art.” (painting group)

“My favorite thing was making the big mural. I feel very proud and I can show my friends what I’m capable of.” (painting group)

“This initiative allowed us to show light on our reality. I also know now that I have talent in my mind and in my hands to express myself now and to build my future.” (journalism group)

“I really thank Plan and Nokia because with this workshop I saw myself transforming my life. I will become an artist and I will make something out of my life” (painting group)

“I liked helping to raise awareness in people and to change things in our community and in ourselves.  I want to share the success we’ve had in this project and our work, and to involve more people. There are many things we can achieve.” (media group)

“The best thing about the workshop was the way that they listened to us, they gave us courage to believe in ourselves. They reminded us that nothing comes from nothing and that only through education can we prepare for our futures.” (theater group)

“I liked working with equipment that I had never seen.  Now I know how to use it. I feel able to learn without fear.” (media group)

And facilitators?

“It was great to see the youth increase their knowledge about their culture, history, rights and the role they can play in their community as agents of change.  I loved seeing the youth apply the things that they learned and then do the work by themselves.  I would like to see more adults in the community participating in a workshop like this. There are many things that we can benefit from as well.” (Facilitator)

“I thought the workshop was fantastic.  The kids gained so much experience and confidence and really took advantage of these new opportunities.” (Facilitator)

Related posts:
On Girls and ICTs
Putting Cumbana on the Map

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Putting Cumbana on the Map–with Ethics

Posted in ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mapping, Mozambique, participation, social media, YETAM, tagged , , , , , on November 14, 2009| 4 Comments »

We’ve completed our first week of arts and media training with around 55 youth in Cumbana, a coastal community some 450 kms north of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.  If you ever tried to Google Cumbana, you’d find information about a photographer with the same last name or links to tourist hotels at the nearby beaches in Maxixe or Inhambane, and not much else.  We actually did this as part of our Tuesday session on Internet with the youth.  Googling New York was another story.  But why?

We turned it around to the youth. Why is there no information on Cumbana?  The conclusion was you only find things on internet that someone puts there, and  no one had bothered, no one had ever really uploaded anything about Cumbana.  And that meant that this group of youth has a big responsibility, because they are going to be the ones to put Cumbana on the map. Photo:  After Cumbana, the top Google search among our small population was, of course, Michael Jackson.

What does that mean?  Aside from producing arts and media to raise issues that affect them and engage their communities in jointly finding solutions, the youth will be the ones to define Cumbana.  As Lauren (the Peace Corps volunteer who’s been teaching at the school for the past 2 years) said:  “Did we find anything about you all in Cumbana now on the internet?  No.  When will there be something about Cumbana?  When you make the effort to put it there.”  Photo: Mobile phone connections are much more likely than computers in the near future, so we trained on internet also using mobiles.

Access to internet whether by laptop using mobile internet or directly on a phone is a huge hit with the kids, 75% of whom had never been online before.  Our 2 hour session could have gone on all day for all they cared. The idea of putting yourself on the map seems to have appeal in the same way that having a Facebook page does.  It’s about self publishing and creating an identity. Photo left: Anthony the local Peace Corps Volunteer supported with the internet and is working with the theater group.  Photo below: Lauren, Peace Corps Volunteer, is working with the multimedia group.

But as we are seeing more and more, citizen journalism has its downfalls (think Fort Hood).  So it was great to see the debates about ethics in journalism that also happened last week.  Jeremias from Radio Mozambique facilitated a great session. He was excited to be part of the workshop because, as he said, “I’m a journalist.  I want to groom more young people from right here in the community where I came from to follow in my profession, and this is a great chance for all of us.”

During Jeremias’ session on ethics, the kids hotly debated the question of whether you should show the face of someone caught stealing.  Many felt that this would punish the thief as well as protect the community. Jeremias countered, “In Mozambique, whose job is it to determine guilt or punishment? Eh?  It’s not the role of the journalist. It’s the role of the judicial system. Like it or not, that’s how it is.”  He talked about the basic rules in journalism to protect people, about divulging information and objectivity. “When you leave here, to do work out there in the community, you need to be sure to hear all sides.  You need to protect the good name of people.  This is our responsibility.  This is ethics.  You cannot condemn someone until the judicial system has determined that they are guilty.”

I sat there wishing every self-appointed citizen journalist followed those rules, and self-examining whether I always do.  But it also got me thinking about how when you are not in a free state, your judicial system is totally non functional, or there is corruption within the journalism profession or media houses, things are not nearly so clear.  Sometimes things need to be filmed to get something to happen, whether they’ve been proven or not.  What are the rules and ethics then?  (I’m sure I can Google this and find a debate!)

The youth were cautioned to leave aside sensationalism.  “Often wanting to be the first to get the news out makes us less careful as journalists” Jeremias said.  If we drop the bomb, we’re likely to see the next day that we are the ones being processed, accused of not being ethical.” Photo: Jeremias and a youth participant share ideas.

“The ethics of a journalist come from within us,” he said.  Sometimes even a journalist’s own employers may ask him do things that are not ethical.  Or others want a certain story to come out and they try to bribe a journalist.  This makes it really difficult to be a journalist. A journalist needs to have high and strong ethics and maintain objectivity,” he told the kids.

“So you see, journalist is under constant pressure. It’s REALLY easy to get a recorder, to make a story.  It’s more difficult to think through what the consequences of publishing that story might be.  As a journalist, your goal is not to get famous; it’s to transmit information, so get the idea of fame right out of your head.”

Jeremias is a wise man and we are really lucky to have him training our group of journalists.

Cumbana is the only secondary school (it covers to 10th grade) in the entire district, with 3 sessions a day, serving some 4000 students (if the teacher I asked is correct). The opportunity to participate in a program like YETAM is huge for students and teachers alike.  In addition to the journalist group, there is theater, music and dance, multimedia, and painting.  For the kids, it’s like a 2 week summer camp where they strengthen leadership skills, improve their studies, get organized to address community challenges facing youth, and think about careers outside of the norm.  For the teachers, it’s an opportunity to engage with students in a different way, to strengthen their teaching methodologies and improve their ICT skills.  For the partners, it’s an opportunity to give back to the community and, of course, to discover new talent for their professions.

Related posts:
On Girls and ICTs
Being a Girl in Cumbana
Is this map better than that map?

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Breaking it Down: Violence Against Children

Posted in participation, protection, VAC, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 27, 2009| 1 Comment »

How do you break down a high level UN study and connect children and youth with the information so that they can use it for their own purposes, engage others and push for a change?  Through participatory arts and media, of course!

My colleague Anastasie (in the photo above) in Plan’s West Africa office is working on a project to stop Violence Against Children (VAC). “We want to make the content and follow up mechanisms of the United Nation’s VAC study widely known among children, youth and their caretakers in West Africa and mobilize a wide representation of children and youth in the region to prevent and respond to violence against children.” Anastasie told me.

“People need to know about the VAC study and its outcomes.  Children and youth especially need to know so that they can participate in finding solutions.  We are working to strengthen the capacities of existing children and youth organizations to play their full role in civil society.  We’re helping develop their capacities to communicate efficiently and effectively about this issue so that they can influence decision making processes.”

What does that actually mean, and what does the project look like?

“We work with the participating youth and children’s organizations and the adults that work with them to build their capacities through producing comic books, cartoons, information booklets, and radio and television programs that inform about the topic of violence against children,” Anastasie told me. “We have a website with a blog to give room to children, youth and adults to share opinions on violence.”  The participating groups have also formed a network and an action plan to focus them as they go forward.

For me, it’s clear that child/youth participatory media is again (disclaimer – I’m obviously passionate about this) an ideal method for both building individual level skills and capacities in children and youth, generating discussion, research and reflection among children and youth on the topic, and identifying real stories and messages that can have a strong impact on viewers and which can be used to share ideas, opinions and generate dialogue.  Social media tools open the project up even further to additional audiences and allow space for those not directly participating to also join in on the discussion. Photo: Youth in Ghana filming opinions about the topic of violence.

The cartoons (go about halfway down on the page click on ‘dessins animes’) and comics (click on ‘BD’) are drawn by the children and youth themselves with the support of partner organization Pictoons (amazing short feature video about Pictoons on Africa Open for Business!).  They are based on real life stories that the children and youth bring to the workshops. Once drawn and animated, adults do professional voiceovers. Currently the materials are only available in French, but they will be dubbed in additional languages to spread their impact further.  The website itself has a wealth of information about violence against children, including statistics, radio discussions, videos, comic books, and the cartoons mentioned above.

In the next phase of the project, additional tools will be incorporated.  “We plan to use SMS, blog and mobile reporting, and maybe Ushahidi and Frontline SMS,” said Anastasie.  “I heard about these tools in a workshop last December at Plan.  I thought these tools would be good for mobilization and monitoring/evaluating the project.”

The idea would be for the youth groups to collect and report on incidences of violence in their communities using SMS.  They would refer people who report violence to institutions that can provide support.  The incident reports would be visualized on maps to show the extent of the problem, and these maps would be used to advocate, along with the other communication materials, to local, district and national decision makers.  “We plan to begin this next phase of incorporating more social media and new technologies starting in January,” said Anastasie. Photo: youth learning to use the computer to share opinions on the VAC blog.

Check out some of the materials made by the youth at the Violence against Children site.  Really nice work!

The Violence Against Children project takes place in 7 countries: Benin, Ghana, Mali, Togo, Guinea Conakry, Cote d’Ivoire and Gambia in partnership with Save the Children, Curious Minds (Ghana), Child Protection Alliance of Gambia, youth and children’s clubs in all these countries, the African Movement for Working Children and Youth, and Planet Jeunes (a popular magazine for youth in West Africa).  The United Nations Violence against Children (UNVAC) studywas released in 2006.  It identified 5 specific places where children face violence: home, school, work, community and institutions. Recently a Special Representative on Violence Against Children (Marta Santos Pais) was appointed by the UN Secretary General to look specifically into this issues.

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Girl Power and the CGI!

Posted in Ghana, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, participation, youth media, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 18, 2009| 2 Comments »

Next week I’ll have the honor of (wo)manning the expo table for Plan at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Exchange [the networking event after the actual CGI meeting]. It’s Plan’s first year at the CGI, which is exciting for us as an organization. The project that we’ve committed to is a convergence of many of the things that Plan has been getting deeper and deeper into in the past few years – youth engagement, youth employment, participatory media, social media, ICTs, youth voice, youth-led advocacy, and last but not least, girl power. I’ll be supporting the project with some training around social media and ICTs based on experiences in past projects such as the Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media project.

Our commitment, Vocational Skills and Media Training for Adolescent Girls in Ghana, is a three-year project that combines job skills training for girls with media production by girls.  The combination of these two elements will give girls key skill sets for employment opportunities while also creating public platforms for girls to raise awareness and advocate on issues affecting them. Through the project 140 adolescent girls will participate in training on media production and journalism, including citizen journalism/social media.  Of those, some will go on to participate in an internship program to do hands-on work in media.  The girls will be trained on how to use diverse types of media, including traditional as well as new media, to advocate against gender discrimination.  Adult journalists will participate in Plan’s training program on child rights and gender respect in media.  In the process, the project will engage the public through radio, television and web communication around the challenges that adolescent girls face in West Africa at the community, national, and regional levels. Participating girls will also have opportunities to meet and share experiences with each other and their female Ghanaian journalist mentors.

I really like this project because it brings so many critical elements into one initiative.  More and more Plan is supporting this type of work in Africa, and it really makes a difference in the youth themselves in terms of skills, self confidence, team work, and learning how to communicate issues of importance in a confident and respectful way.  It helps them access information and new skills that help them find employment. It also has an impact on communities who see their youth in a new light and who become more open to dialogue with youth around issues that youth want to discuss but may not be able to bring up in existing forums.  The media produced by children and youth can raise awareness and encourage dialogue at the national level, and it can be presented in global meetings to bring youth voices and a dose of reality into high level discussions. It can be shared on the internet to engage and involve people in other parts of the world, and to break down stereotypes about Africans. I also think one outcome will be that the participating girls and women will contribute to modernizing the field of journalism in Ghana because they will be trained on new media tools and they will likely think seriously about how girls are portrayed by the media in the future.

Plan’s research “Because I am a Girl: The State of the World’s Girls” came out in 2007, highlighting the urgency for us to focus more programs on girls as key players.  Out of this report, a decision was made to make girls Plan’s key focus over the next several years, and the Because I am a Girl Campaign was launched.  Since then, two in depth studies have highlighted specific issues: Because I am a Girl: In the Shadow of War (2008), and Girl’s Economic Empowerment (coming out later this month).

Come by our table to say hi if you happen to be at CGI exchange!

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On Girls and ICTs

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Child Friendly Communities

Posted in development, Mali, participation, smart aid, travel, youth media, tagged , , , , , on February 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I had dinner last night with those who had arrived for the meeting and then crashed. My luggage came around 3 a.m. so I had to go down to the lobby half asleep to get it! But yay!
Today we went out to the community were we had dropped the radio equipment off yesterday. First we went to a meeting at the Plan office. It was really interesting to hear their strategy which is centered around the concept of Child Friendly Communities. The cool thing is that they work with the community to define a set of indicators that the community is in agreement with. Then they measure where the community is at currently (baseline). Then they work with the community to improve their indicators. The interesting thing is that I have never seen it where the community is involved with setting and tracking indicators of their own development. Really really cool. We heard all the theory about it in the morning when the country director and program manager gave us an overview.
Then we all drove out to the village where the community representatives went through all their community indicators and explained where they were with them. So things like how many mothers are exclusively breastfeeding. How many kids are attending school. Percentage that have good hygiene habits. Etc. etc. We saw a few projects in the community – the early childhood care and development center, the nutrition center, and the women’s village savings and loan project. It was really interesting to see how they work, the impact the projects are having on the health and education of the kids, and also all the work that the women are doing to improve their community.
Photo: Community nutrition center where they weigh children to track their growth. They also work with the mothers to show them how to use locally available ingredients like sorghum, peanuts, herbs that grow in the area, to make high protein, high calorie porridge. The program is based on the concept of positive deviance — where the mothers who manage to have well nourished children are studied to find out how they do it, and then their habits are replicated/taught to the other mothers.
Stefanie asked the women in the savings and loan group what the men did, because she had seen mostly women doing all the work in all the projects. That really got a good laugh out of the women. The way the development process seems to work is that the men make the decisions about which projects and initiatives that their wives can participate in. Custom allows multiple wives. The men see the advantage of the improved health and education of their children, and the improved financial status of their wives. Mostly the men work in the fields and do the heavy work for project that require manual labor. Interesting dynamic though – when Stefanie asked her question there was a super long and animated conversation among several of the women and the men from the partner local organization that manages the project. None of this was translated for us! Then Thiekoro from Plan Mali just made a very quick summary. Stefanie asked for clarification later….and I’m not sure the real story was revealed then either.
After we talked with all the project groups, the radio project crew – Kids Waves – did a live radio show. The radio project moves from community to community, training the kids and then the develop a half-hour radio show on different topics. They were covering the issue of Violence in Schools. They had invited the local mayor and the director of the school to ask them about the issue and what they planned to do about it. When will children stop being beaten in schools? The officials assured them that they would not beat children any more. Many of the children laughed at that. I didn’t understand much of what was happening because the radio show is conducted in Bambara, the local language. But the kids and the community really really got a kick out of it, and the kids were great. Self assured and really professional.

Photo: Kids Waves radio program.

We stayed until around 4 and then drove back. We arrived quite late due to traffic and I was soooo tired by then. I went out for pizza with a few of the others, Messan from Togo, Carmen from Benin and Francoise from Burkina. Messan and Francoise had participated in the Kenya Social Media for Social Change workshop, and it was great to see them again. One of the best things about working for Plan is when you have a chance to see colleagues again and develop nice friendships and working relationships.

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