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Delivering Privilege via WhiteSave.me

Posted in activism, communication for development, disruption, emerging opportunities, ICTs, mobile and technology, innovation, mobile and technology, slacktivism, social justice, social media, technology, wait... what?, tagged whitesave.me; art-a-hack on July 27, 2015| 1 Comment »

I had the privilege (no pun intended) of participating in the Art-a-Hack program via ThoughtWorks this past couple of months. Art-a-Hack is a creative space for artists and hackers to get together for 4 Mondays in June and work together on projects that involve art, tech and hacking. There’s no funding involved, just encouragement, support, and a physical place to help you carve out some time out for discovery and exploration.

I was paired up by the organizers with two others (Dmytri and Juan), and we embarked on a project. I had earlier submitted an idea of the core issues that I wanted to explore, and we mind-melded really well to come up with a plan to create something around them.

Here is our press release with links to the final product – WhiteSave.me. You can read our Artist Statement here and follow us on Twitter @whitesave.me. Feedback welcome, and please share if you think it’s worth sharing. Needless to say full responsibility for the project falls with the team, and it does not represent the views of any past, present or future employers or colleagues.

*****

Announcing WhiteSave.me

WhiteSave.me is a revolutionary new platform that enables White Saviors to deliver privilege to non-Whites whenever and wherever they need it with the simple tap of a finger.

Today’s White guy is increasingly told “check your privilege.” He often asks himself “What am I supposed to do about my privilege? It’s not my fault I was born white! And really, I’m not a bad person!”

Until now, there has been no simple way for a White guy to be proactive in addressing the issue of his privilege. He’s been told that he benefits from biased institutions and that his privilege is related to historically entrenched power structures. He’s told to be an ally but advised to take a back seat and follow the lead from people of color. Unfortunately this is all complex and time consuming, and addressing privilege in this way is hard work.

We need to address the issue of White privilege now however – we can’t wait. Changing attitudes, institutions, policies and structures takes too damn long! What’s more, we can’t expect White men or our current systems to go through deep changes in order to address privilege and inequality at the roots. What we can do is leapfrog over what would normally require decades of grassroots social organizing, education, policy work, and behavior change and put the solution to White privilege directly into White men’s hands so that everyone can get back to enjoying the American dream.

WhiteSave.me – an innovative solution that enables White men to quickly and easily deliver privilege to the underprivileged, requiring only a few minutes of downtime, at their discretion and convenience.

Though not everyone realizes it, White privilege affects a large number of White people, regardless of their age or political persuasion. White liberals generally agree that they are privileged, but most are simply tired of hearing about it and having to deal with it. Conservative White men believe their privilege is all earned, but most also consider it possible to teach people of color about deep-seated American values and traditions and the notion of personal responsibility. All told, what most White people want is a simple, direct way to address their privilege once and for all. Our research has confirmed that most White people would be willing to spend a few minutes every now and then sharing their privilege, as long as it does not require too much effort.

WhiteSave.me is a revolutionary and innovative way of addressing this issue. (Read Our Story here to learn more about our discovery moments!) We’ve designed a simple web and mobile platform that enables White men to quickly and easily deliver a little bit of their excess privilege to non-Whites, all through a simple and streamlined digital interface. Liberal Whites can assuage guilt and concern about their own privilege with the tap of a finger. Conservatives can feel satisfied that they have passed along good values to non-Whites. Libertarians can prove through direct digital action that tech can resolve complex issues without government intervention and via the free market. And non-White people of any economic status, all over the world, will benefit from immediate access to White privilege directly through their devices. Everyone wins – with no messy disruption of the status quo!

How it Works

Visit our “how it works” page for more information, or simply “try it now” and your first privilege delivery session is on us! Our patented Facial Color Recognition Algorithm (™) will determine whether you qualify as a White Savior, based on your skin color. (Alternatively it will classify you as a non-White ‘Savee’). Once we determine your Whiteness, you’ll be automatically connected via live video with a Savee who is lacking in White privilege so that you can share some of your good sense and privileged counsel with him or her, or periodically alleviate your guilt by offering advice and a one-off session of helping someone who is less privileged.

Our smart business model guarantees WhiteSave.me will be around for as long as it’s needed, and that we can continue innovating with technology to iterate new solutions as technology advances. WhiteSave.me is free for White Saviors to deliver privilege, and non-Whites can choose from our Third World Freemium Model (free), our Basic Model ($9/month), or our Premium Model ($29/month). To generate additional revenue, our scientific analysis of non-White user data will enable us to place targeted advertisements that allow investors and partners to extract value from the Base of the Pyramid. Non-Profit partners are encouraged to engage WhiteSave.me as their tech partner for funding proposals, thereby appearing innovative and guaranteeing successful grant revenue.

See our FAQs for additional information and check out our Success Stories for more on how WhiteSave.me, in just its first few months, has helped thousands to deliver privilege all over the world.

Try It Now and you’ll be immediately on your way to delivering privilege through our quick and easy digital solution!

Contact help@whitesave.me for more information. And please help us spread the word. Addressing the issue of White privilege has never been so easy!

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LGBTQI rights & technology for development

Posted in activism, development, ICT4D, innovation, privacy, protection, social justice, technology, technology salon, TSNYC, tagged development, ICT, ICT4D, LGBTQI, policies, programming, rights, staff, stakeholders, technology on April 24, 2015| 1 Comment »

By Mala Kumar and Linda Raftree

Our April 21^st NYC Technology Salon focused on issues related to the LGBT ICT4D community, including how LGBTQI issues are addressed in the context of stakeholders and ICT4D staff. We examined specific concerns that ICT4D practitioners who identify as LGBTQI have, as well as how LGBTQI stakeholders are (or are not) incorporated into ICT4D projects, programs and policies. Among the many issues covered in the Salon, the role of the Internet and mobile devices for both community building and surveillance/security concerns played a central part in much of the discussion.

To frame the discussion, participants were asked to think about how LGBTQI issues within ICT4D (and more broadly, development) are akin to gender. Mainstreaming gender in development starts with how organizations treat their own staff. Implementing programs, projects and policies with a focus on gender cannot happen if the implementers do not first understand how to treat staff, colleagues and those closest to them (i.e. family, friends). Likewise, without a proper understanding of LGBTQI colleagues and staff, programs that address LGBTQI stakeholders will be ineffective.

The lead discussants of the Salon were Mala Kumar, writer and former UN ICT4D staff, Tania Lee, current IRC ICT4D Program Officer, and Robert Valadéz, current UN ICT4D staff. Linda Raftree moderated the discussion.

Unpacking LGBTQI

The first discussant pointed out how we as ICT4D/development practitioners think of the acronym LGBTQI, particularly the T and I – transgender and intersex. Often, development work focuses on the sexual identity portion of the acronym (the LGBQ), and not what is considered in Western countries as transgenderism.

As one participant said, the very label of “transgender” is hard to convey in many countries where “third gender” and “two-spirit gender” exist. These disagreements in terminology have – in Bangladesh and Nepal for example – resulted in creating conflict and division of interest within LGBTQI communities. In other countries, such as Thailand and parts of the Middle East, “transgenderism” can be considered more “normal” or societally acceptable than homosexuality. Across Africa, Latin America, North America and Europe, homosexuality is a better understood – albeit sometimes severely criminalized and socially rejected – concept than transgenderism.

One participant cited that in her previous first-hand work on services for lesbian, gay and bisexual people; often in North America, transgender communities are prioritized less in LGBTQI services. In many cases she saw in San Francisco, homeless youth would identify as anything in order to gain access to needed services. Only after the services were provided did the beneficiaries realize the consequences of self-reporting or incorrectly self-reporting.

Security concerns within Unpacking LGBTQI

For many people, the very notion of self-identifying as LGBTQI poses severe security risks. From a data collection standpoint, this results in large problems in accurate representation of populations. It also results in privacy concerns. As one discussant mentioned, development and ICT4D teams often do not have the technical capacity (i.e. statisticians, software engineers) to properly anonymize data and/or keep data on servers safe from hackers. On the other hand, the biggest threat to security may just be “your dad finding your phone and reading a text message,” as one person noted.

Being an LGBTQI staff in ICT4D

Our second lead discussant spoke about being (and being perceived as) an LGBTQI staff member in ICT4D. She noted that many of the ICT4D hubs, labs, centers, etc. are in countries that are notoriously homophobic. Examples include Uganda (Kampala), Kenya (Nairobi), Nigeria (Abuja, Lagos), Kosovo and Ethiopia (Addis). This puts people who are interested in technology for development and are queer at a distinct disadvantage.

Some of the challenges she highlighted include that ICT4D attracts colleagues from around the world who are the most likely to be adept at computers and Internet usage, and therefore more likely to seek out and find information about other staff/colleagues online. If those who are searching are homophobic, finding “evidence” against colleagues can be both easy and easy to disseminate. Along those lines, ICT4D practitioners are encouraged (and sometimes necessitated) to blog, use social media, and keep an online presence. In fact, many people in ICT4D find posts and contracts this way. However, keeping online professional and personal presences completely separate is incredibly challenging. Since ICT4D practitioners are working with colleagues most likely to actually find colleagues online, queer ICT4D practitioners are presented with a unique dilemma.

ICT4D practitioners are arguably the set of people within development that are the best fitted to utilize technology and programmatic knowledge to self-advocate as LGBT staff and for LGBT stakeholder inclusion. However, how are queer ICT4D staff supposed to balance safety concerns and professional advancement limitations when dealing with homophobic staff? This issue is further compounded (especially in the UN, as one participant noted) by being awarded the commonly used project-based contracts, which give staff little to no job security, bargaining power or general protection when working overseas.

Security concerns within being an LGBTQI staff in ICT4D

A participant who works in North America for a Kenyan-based company said that none of her colleagues ever mentioned her orientation, even though they must have found her publicly viewable blog on gender and she is not able to easily disguise her orientation. She talked about always finding and connecting to the local queer community wherever she goes, often through the Internet, and tries to support local organizations working on LGBT issues. Still, she and several other participants and discussants emphasized their need to segment online personal and professional lives to remain safe.

Another participant mentioned his time working in Ethiopia. The staff from the center he worked with made openly hostile remarks about gays, which reinforced his need to stay closeted. He noticed that the ICT staff of the organization made a concerted effort to research people online, and that Facebook made it difficult, if not impossible, to keep personal and private lives separate.

Another person reiterated this point by saying that as a gay Latino man, and the first person in his family to go to university, grad school and work in a professional job, he is a role model to many people in his community. He wants to offer guidance and support, and used to do so with a public online presence. However, at his current internationally-focused job he feels the need to self-censor and has effectively limited talking about his public online presence, because he often interacts with high level officials who are hostile towards the LGBTQI community.

One discussant also echoed this idea, saying that she is becoming a voice for the queer South Asian community, which is important because much of LGBT media is very white. The tradeoff for becoming this voice is compromising her career in the field because she cannot accept a lot of posts because they do not offer adequate support and security.

Intersectionality

Several participants and discussants offered their own experiences on the various levels of hostility and danger involved with even being suspected as gay. One (female) participant began a relationship with a woman while working in a very conservative country, and recalled being terrified at being killed over the relationship. Local colleagues began to suspect, and eventually physically intervened by showing up at her house. This participant cited her “light skinned privilege” as one reason that she did not suffer serious consequences from her actions.

Another participant recounted his time with the US Peace Corps. After a year, he started coming out and dating people in host country. When one relationship went awry and he was turned into the police for being gay, nothing came of the charges. Meanwhile, he saw local gay men being thrown into – and sometimes dying in – jail for the same charges. He and some other participants noted their relative privilege in these situations because they are white. This participant said he felt that as a white male, he felt a sense of invincibility.

In contrast, a participant from an African country described his experience growing up and using ICTs as an escape because any physical indication he was gay would have landed him in jail, or worse. He had to learn how to change his mannerisms to be more masculine, had to learn how to disengage from social situations in real life, and live in the shadows.

One of the discussants echoed these concerns, saying that as a queer woman of color, everything is compounded. She was recruited for a position at a UN Agency in Kenya, but turned the post down because of the hostility towards gays and lesbians there. However, she noted that some queer people she has met – all white men from the States or Europe – have had overall positive experiences being gay with the UN.

Perceived as predators

One person brought up the “predator” stereotype often associated with gay men. He and his partner have had to turn down media opportunities where they could have served as role models for the gay community, especially poor, gay queer men of color, (who are one of the most difficult socioeconomic classes to reach) out of fear that this stereotype may impact on their being hired to work in organizations that serve children.

Monitoring and baiting by the government

One participant who grew up in Cameroon mentioned that queer communities in his country use the Internet cautiously, even though it’s the best resource to find other queer people. The reason for the caution is that government officials have been known to pose as queer people to bait real users for illegal gay activity.

Several other participants cited this same phenomenon in different forms. A recent article talked about Egypt using new online surveillance tactics to find LGBTQI people. Some believe that this type of surveillance will also happen in Nigeria, a notoriously hostile country towards LGBTQI persons and other places.

There was also discussion about what IP or technology is the safest for LGBTQI people. While the Internet can be monitored and traced back to a specific user, being able to connect from multiple access points and with varying levels of security creates a sense of anonymity that phones cannot provide. A person also generally carries phones, so if the government intercepts a message on either the originating or receiving device, implications of existing messages are immediate unless a user can convince the government the device was stolen or used by someone else. In contrast, phones are more easily disposable and in several countries do not require registration (or a registered SIM card) to a specific person.

In Ethiopia, the government has control over the phone networks and can in theory monitor these messages for LGBTQI activity. This poses a particular threat since there is already legal precedent for convictions of illegal activity based on text messages. In some countries, major telecom carriers are owned by a national government. In others, major telecom carries are national subsidiaries of an international company.

Another major concern raised relates back to privacy. Many major international development organizations do not have the capacity or ability to retain necessary software engineers, ICT architects and system operators, statisticians and other technology people to properly prevent Internet hacks and surveillance. In some cases, this work is illegal by national government policy, and thus also requires legal advocacy. The mere collection of data and information can therefore pose a security threat to staff and stakeholders – LGBTQI and allies, alike.

The “queer divide”

One discussant asked the group for data or anecdotal information related to the “queer divide.” A commonly understood problem in ICT4D work are divides – between genders, urban and rural, rich and poor, socially accepted and socially marginalized. There have also been studies to clearly demonstrate that people who are naturally extroverted and not shy benefit more from any given program or project. As such, is there any data to support a “queer divide” between those who are LGBTQI and those who are not, he wondered. As demonstrated in the above sections, many queer people are forced to disengage socially and retreat from “normal” society to stay safe.

Success stories, key organizations and resources

Participants mentioned organizations and examples of more progressive policies for LGBTQI staff and stakeholders (this list is not comprehensive, nor does it suggest these organizations’ policies are foolproof), including:

UN Women, UNICEF and LGBT stakeholder inclusion
USAID staff training
Peace Corps – Americans and local on-the-ground staff go through sensitivity trainings
US Foreign Service provides comprehensive security for its staff
Ally Forney Center – good training, modeling and sensitivity activities
Sylvia Rivera Law Project
Virginia Anti-Violence Project

We also compiled a much more extensive list of resources on the topic here as background reading, including organizations, articles and research. (Feel free to add to it!)

What can we do moving forward?

Engage relevant organizations, such as Out in Tech and Lesbians who Tech, with specific solutions, such as coding privacy protocols for online communities and helping grassroots organizations target ads to relevant stakeholders.
Lobby smartphone manufacturers to increase privacy protections on mobile devices.
Lobby US and other national governments to introduce “Right to be forgotten” law, which allows Internet users to wipe all records of themselves and personal activity.
Support organizations and services that offer legal council to those in need.
Demand better and more comprehensive protection for LGBTQI staff, consultants and interns in international organizations.

Key questions to work on…

In some countries, a government owns telecom companies. In others, telecom companies are national subsidiaries of international corporations. In countries in which the government is actively or planning on actively surveying networks for LGBTQI activity, how does the type of telecom company factor in?
What datasets do we need on LGBTQI people for better programming?
How do we properly anonymize data collected? What are the standards of best practices?
What policies need to be in place to better protect LGBTQI staff, consultants and interns? What kind of sensitizing activities, trainings and programming need to be done for local staff and less LGBTQI sensitive international staff in ICT4D organizations?
How much capacity have ICT4D/international organizations lost as a result of their policies for LGBTQI staff and stakeholders?
What are the roles and obligations of ICT4D/international organizations to their LGBTQI staff, now and in the future?
What are the ICT4D and international development programmatic links with LGBT stakeholders and staff? How does LGBT stakeholders intersect with water? Public health? Nutrition? Food security? Governance and transparency? Human rights? Humanitarian crises? How does LGBT staff intersect with capacity? Trainings? Programming?
How do we safely and responsibility increase visibility of LGBTQI people around the world?
How do we engage tech companies that are pro-LGBTQI, including Google, to do more for those who cannot or do not engage with their services?
What are the economic costs of homophobia, and does this provide a compelling enough case for countries to stop systemic LGBTQI-phobic behavior?
How do we mainstream LGBTQI issues in bigger development conferences and discussions?

Thanks to the great folks at ThoughtWorks for hosting and providing a lovely breakfast to us! Technology Salons are carried out under Chatham House Rule, so no attribution has been made. If you’d like to join us for Technology Salons in future, sign up here!

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How can tech support housing rights in Brooklyn?

Posted in activism, Brooklyn, development, ICT4D, mobile, mobile and technology, NYC, participation, politics, social justice, technology salon, wait... what?, tagged brooklyn, housing, rights, Salon, technology, tenant on April 21, 2015| 2 Comments »

“Bedstuybrownstone1” by Newyork10r http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bedstuybrownstone1.jpg#/media/File:Bedstuybrownstone1.jpg

Our April 16^th Technology Salon Brooklyn, co-hosted with the Brooklyn Community Foundation (BCF) and AfroLatin@ Project explored the issue of tenant rights within the wider context of structural discrimination. We aimed to think about how new technology and social media might be a tool for helping community organizations to support Brooklyn residents to know their rights and report violations. We were also curious about how better use of data (and ‘big data’) might help housing rights activists and community organizations to more successfully engage residents and advocate for change.

Our lead discussant was David Reiss from Brooklyn Law School, who provided an overview of the wider housing market and challenges in New York City as well as information on some applications that are helping landlords do a better job of keeping properties up to standard. We also heard from Tynesha McHarris (BCF) and Amilcar Priestly (AfroLatin@ Project).

Brooklyn: lots of cool, lots of inequality

Kicking off the Salon, one discussant talked about the essence of Brooklyn. “What do you think of when you hear ‘Brooklyn’?” she asked. “It’s incredibly ‘cool,’ yes. But it’s also incredibly inequitable and there is incredibly inequality, mainly for people of color.” Brooklyn is the hub of New York’s tech industry, yet it’s also where tenants are being displaced, harassed and finding it difficult to live. “We want to see how tech can be used as a tool for, not a tool against,” she said, “how can we support folks to understand, advocate and organize around their rights, how we can use tech to organize in as well as across communities, because these issues don’t just affect some people, they affect all of us who live here.”

She noted that technology is a tool with potential, and donors could be funding projects that use tech to help organize and advocate on tenant rights, but there is insufficient evidence to know how to approach it. To date technology has not really been part of the bigger picture.

Another discussant talked about the housing market as a whole in New York City, citing that there available affordable housing has not kept up with the huge influx of population over the past several years. “Technology will not fix the underlying problem,” he noted. “It can’t expand the supply of affordable housing.” The real potential for technology is more in helping protect the rights of current tenants.

Some examples of how tech is supporting housing rights include applications and portals aimed at improving communications between landlords and tenants, so that problems can be more easily reported by either side, and record is kept of complaints, he commented. Incentives for landlords include free advertising of their units on the site and some reduced legal fees for things like rent stabilization approval. An interesting aspect of these sites is that the data can be analyzed to see where the largest number of complaints are coming from, and in this way patterns can be found and identified. For example, who are the bad landlords? Other sites offer lots of data for those who are interested in purchasing units, and this same type of data could be repurposed and made more accessible for lower-income and less technologically savvy residents.

One participant noted that gentrification and policing are very connected. “As we talk about legal rights and landlord-to-tenant conversations,” she noted, “we need to also bring in aspects of policing and racial justice. These are closely linked.“ As neighborhoods gentrify, newer residents often call for a greater police presence, and this can lead to harassment of long-time residents.

What other roles could technology play in strengthening existing work?

Connecting people and organizations

Lots of community organizations are working on the issues of tenant rights and gentrification, and there is a desire to build a network across these organizations. Tech could help to bring them together and to support stronger advocacy and organization. People don’t always know where they can go for help. One idea was to map organizations in different neighborhoods where people can go for help on housing issues. People also may think that they are the only tenants in a building who are having trouble with a landlord. Improved communication via tech might help let residents know they are not alone and to reduce the fear of reporting and speaking out about housing violations. One idea was to use the new system of NYC neighborhood domains to provide local information, including housing rights and specific information on buildings and their histories.

Transferring tactics from one movement to another

We’ve seen the huge role that mobile video has played in raising awareness on the issue of police violence, noted one discussant. “Technology has become a very powerful tool for communication and accountability, look at the case of Walter Scott (who died at the hands of a volunteer policeman). The young man who filmed Scott’s death knew just what to do. He pointed his camera and captured it. How can we transfer this kind of action over to the housing movement? How can we get people to use their cameras and record housing violations and landlord harassment?”

Offering new, potentially more effective ways to report housing violations

Tech can offer different dissemination channels for different people – for example, in Detroit the elderly are particularly vulnerable to housing violations, said one Salon participant. One organization encourages people to report housing harassment via SMS. They included a call-back option to cater to older people who did not feel comfortable with SMS. Stories are also an important part of campaigns and public awareness, noted another participant. Sandy Storyline created a way to share text plus a photo via SMS for those who wanted to communicate stories but who were offline. This type of application could serve as a way of keeping record of housing violations, when/where they are reported and what the outcomes are.

Tracking housing violations

One way that tech is already helping is by tracking whether public housing buildings have heat and water. Sensors are attached to the buildings, and the information is sent to journalists who then write stories when building violations happen, mentioned one Salon participant. This could be accompanied by text messages out to residents of these buildings to inform them of the status of their building. Knowing that they are not the only ones noticing problems could help residents feel more confident about speaking out and confronting bad landlords. “It’s information that says to someone: ‘this message it not only for you, it’s for everyone in your building, and here is the number you can call to get support or if you fear retribution for reporting.’” Media attention puts pressure on landlords and can help bring violations to light and make people feel safer reporting them.

Encouraging local politicians to get involved

A study in Kenya found that youth tend to bypass local politicians and pay more attention to national government and governance. Similar trends are found in the US where although local political decisions may impact more directly on residents fewer are involved in or aware of local political processes than national ones. Tech could play a role in helping connect residents to local representatives who could take action to support fair housing, address bad landlords, and support longer-term solutions as well. Some local political offices have been very open to integrating technology into their work, said one participant, and these offices might be good places to think about partnering on initiatives that use technology to better connect with their constituencies.

Tracking and predicting trends and population movements and displacement

Mapping and big data sets are providing investors with incredible amounts of information on where to purchase and invest. How can organizations and advocates better use this information, not just to identify movement and displacement and conduct research on it, but also to predict it, prepare for it, and fight it together with residents? How is information that data scientists and research institutes have, as well as open data sets on New York City used by local organizations, some wondered, and where could it be better brought to bear? “Rather than coming up with parallel studies, how can we advocate for more and better open data from New York City on housing?” asked one participant.

Other recommendations

Don’t forget about the legalities of videotaping and sharing

Some people and politicians are pushing to make things like police videotaping illegal. This happened recently in Spain with the so-called “Citizen Security” law that has made it illegal to videotape a police officer in some cases. One discussant mentioned that some US Senators are also trying to restrict the rights of citizens to film police, and that advocates of social justice need to fight to keep these rights to document authorities.

Use the right technology for the audience

One participant noted that you can create great apps with all kinds of data and patterns, but the question is more about who will access and use them, and who is benefiting from them. Wealthy white men and already-privileged people will likely find it very simple to find and use the information and these applications, giving them an advantage in terms of finding good apartments at lower prices, with good landlords. The best way to reach lower income people, he said, as personally experienced from working on political campaigns, is knocking on doors and reaching out personally and directly. “We need to see how to marry community organization and technology.”

Understand the landscape

In order to understand what tech tools might be useful, it we need to understand the communication and technology landscape in which we are working. Though Salon participants mentioned the importance of certain print publications, community radio stations in various languages, and increasing use of smart phones by young people, no one was aware of any current and widespread information on the information and communication habits of residents of Brooklyn that could help to target particular outreach efforts to different groups who were at risk of housing violations.

SMS is not a silver bullet – and trust is key

SMS can be extremely accessible, and there are many examples where it has worked very well. But experience shows that SMS works best where there are already strong networks in place, and trust is hugely important. One participant cautioned, “People need to trust where the text message is coming from. They need to know who is sending the text.” SMS also has limits because it is hyper local. “You won’t find it working across an entire Borough,” said one participant.

Local organizations are key

Along with the issue of trust is the critical component of local organizations. As one participant reminded us, “especially faith-based organizations – temples, churches, mosques. They know everyone in the neighborhood and what’s going on. They tend to know how to walk a fine line on local politics.”

Youth could play a role

Because youth around the world, including in Brooklyn, tend to be up on the latest technology, they could play a role in helping parents and grandparents with housing rights violations, especially in communities where older people are not comfortable with English or where they may fear the police due to undocumented status or other past experiences. One idea was bridging the technology and age gap by engaging young people, who could help older people find out about their rights, legal support services and where to find help. Some research has shown that young people are starting to rely on technology as an institution, said one participant, with technology and online institutions replacing physical ones for many of them.

Be careful about creating demand without adequate response capacity

As with any tech project, creating demand for services and informing people about the existence of those services is often an easier task than building and sustaining the capacity to provide quality support. Any efforts to generate greater demand need to be accompanied by capacity and funding so that people do not become apathetic or feel that they’ve been tricked if they report a violation and do not receive the support they expect or were promised. Previous experiences with service providers or legal institutions will also impact whether people trust these efforts, even if they come through new channels like technology.

Figure out how community organizations and technology partners can work together

An important thing to work out is what a relationship between community organizations and technology partners might look like. “Community organizations don’t need to become technology experts, we could partner and work together on resolving some of these challenges,” said one participant, “but we need to figure out what something like that would look like.” In some cases, community organizations in Brooklyn have low capacity and extremely poor infrastructure due to limited funding, commented one participant. “How can we reach out and engage with them and ask if they are interested in working with tech partners? How can we find out from them what tech would be supportive for them in their work?”

Think about short and long-term efforts

It will be important to look at both supporting residents and community organizations in the immediate term, and thinking about how to use data and information to help address the long term and the wider structural issues that are playing a role in housing rights violations and differential impacts of the housing situation on specific groups, for example, the elderly and people of color. It’s also important to try to address some of the root causes – for example, as one participant asked, “Who is funding predatory landlords? Who are the investors in these vulture funds?”

***

In conclusion, participants expressed their interest in continuing discussions and a desire for greater participation by community organizations in future Salons. The hope is that the Salon can help to connect community organizations and those in the tech space in order to work together to address some of the issues that Brooklyn residents face.

If you’d like to join us for our next Salon, sign up here.

Many thanks to the Brooklyn Community Foundation for their fabulous hosting and AfroLatin@ Project for helping make the Salon happen!

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Tips for white guys for when the conversation heats up

Posted in activism, musing or confusing, participation, politics, social justice, tagged being an ally, race, white people on December 15, 2014| 2 Comments »

This post was contributed by J. (Tales from the Hood)

I was pleased when Linda put up her latest post. There’s a lot of opinion in the blogosphere lately about what white people need to understand or not understand, helping us get in touch with our “privilege”, etc. A lot of it is really excellent.

Something that I have struggled with personally, and have seen my white male demographic comrades also struggle with, though, is: What, then, are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to act? I don’t feel privileged, but okay—I still am. I get it. Privilege acknowledged. Check. But now what?

In his excellent piece Douchebag: The white racial slur we’ve all been waiting for, Michael Mark Cohen notes that “White racial slurs are not common in our colorblind age because they don’t work on people who posses white privilege. When they do work, like “redneck” or “cracker,” it’s a matter of class politics…. Rich white men enjoy the invisible power of being just people. Normal, basic Humanity. Everyone else gets some version of discrimination.”

Now, I don’t want to be a “douchebag”— who would? But somehow, calling taxation of the rich “the douchebag tax” rather than “class warefare”, seems, well, academic and not very important in the grand scheme of things. That’ll win me a few smiles of affirmation in the coffee room, but doesn’t give me much guidance for getting through the day in a racially diverse neighborhood or ideas on how to support change to happen.

So for posterity, for those basically decent white guys who “get it” but are unsure how to act when the conversation around them heats up, here are the rules I try to live by:

This is not about you. If you find yourself entering discussions with a lengthy expose of where you grew up, what your socioeconomic status was, whether your upbringing somehow set you on a path for racism or not-racism… yeah, you may want to reconsider your approach. Process your own issues as needed, but don’t bring them into this conversation. Why? Because this conversation is specifically about the rights and needs of other people.

No one is immune. It doesn’t matter where your origins lie, generations back; it doesn’t matter that your great, great grandfather was or wasn’t a plantation owner. It doesn’t matter if all of your friends are of another race/culture/ethnicity. It doesn’t matter if you’re in an interracial or cross-cultural relationship. No one is immune from making mistakes, not even you. Don’t try to pretend otherwise. If you make a mistake — maybe you use an offensive term or fall back on a convenient stereotype — acknowledge it, give a sincere apology, and move on.

No one’s holding your responsible for the sins of others. Don’t get all defensive, like, “I never hit/choked/shot/raped/owned any black people… so back off!” Fine, you probably didn’t, but that’s not the point, and in the vast majority of cases you’re not being personally accused of those things. The important thing is to acknowledge that those awful things did and still do happen, and then take steps to change that. Too often we use our lack of specific personal culpability as a reason to disengage from the issues of race inequality overall.

[Editor’s note from Linda: The larger issue here is “structural racism,” or “systemic racism.” Learn about what that means, don’t take it personally, and use your vote, voice and behavior to help remove/un-do/change it. Read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ piece to get a really deep understanding of how structural racism has affected black people in the US over the years and continues today.]

No token gestures. Don’t collect friends of other colors. Don’t go all over-the-top with moral indignation on your Facebook page. No blasting Salt ‘n’ Pepper while cruising in your Prius. No ostentatious displays of confessing your privilege. Just be normal: Look people in the eye when you speak to them. If you’re friends with people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, express support and solidarity if it’s appropriate to do so, but don’t go all earnest emo. Join protests — definitely — solidarity is critical in order to move these issues forward and achieve structural changes. But don’t make it about you and your needs. Understand that your vote on local issues may accomplish much more than your signboard. And, no — don’t ever wear an “I Am Trayvon” T-shirt.

Don’t use somebody else’s asshattery to justify your asshattery. Newsflash: Literally every community on the planet has members who are jerks. Just because there was that one time, back in 1987 when some black guy was a jerk to you, doesn’t give you carte blance to cling to stereotypes or act like a jerk toward others. This is just basic.

Understand that people get emotional. Some people go ballistic just at Starbucks. Or Walmart. Can you even imagine what it must be like to be on the receiving end of literally generations of racial discrimination? It should surprise no one that tempers flare, voices get loud, and pronouncements become extreme. Dude, just let people express themselves. Not everyone is a professional orator. Don’t try to deflate or invalidate it. Don’t feel as if you have to nit-pick or respond to everything. Which leads to…

Know when to shut up.

Don’t play the victim. You know how everyone thinks we can’t dance or “don’t have rhythm”? Yeah, just let it go.

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“This is not about you”

Posted in accountability, activism, participation, politics, social justice, wait... what?, tagged being an ally, it's not about you, support on December 12, 2014| 6 Comments »

So, here’s a good post called “Dear White Protesters” from Tam who writes on Tumblr as Young, Gifted and Black. It’s aimed at white folks protesting the grand jury decisions on the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases and in general at white people who want to be allies in the struggle against structural violence and discrimination against black people and racist policing.

Tam specifically talks about the protests that happened in Berkeley on December 6th, writing:

I was so happy to read Tam’s post, because I was in Berkeley last week, too, and the protesters were assembled in front of the police station down the street from where I was staying. I went over there around 6.30 because I wanted to join in, and I was missing the protests in New York because of travel. At that point in the evening, the situation was peaceful. The cops were lined up in front of the police station in riot gear, and people were calmly standing around or sitting on the ground singing, “Which side are you on? Which side are you on?” Later, I hear, the protests got crazy and there were rubber bullets, tear gas, windows smashed with skateboards, and tasers.

As I arrived to the police station, however, it was people milling around, getting ready for a ‘die in.’ They started lying down in the street. And I was not sure what to do. I wanted to support the movement and guessed that I should also lie down. But the protest seemed a bit ‘off.’ I hardly saw a black person there. The sign saying “Fuck the Police” covering the body of a hipster white girl lying in the street felt about as real as when middle class white people rap along with the 1988 N.W.A. song by the same name. (OK, confession. I do that. But not in public, and not to make a statement.)

Anyway, the whole thing made me feel confused about what I and others were doing there, so I left, feeling that maybe I was just getting old. I felt like I was not doing enough, but I also felt unable to participate in something that seemed somehow false. As I walked over to the BART station to catch a train, I couldn’t help but notice the group of older black homeless men at the park a half a block away from the police station. I couldn’t help but think of the black man with a shopping cart that I witnessed police harassing earlier that week on a suburban side street in Berkeley. None of them were engaged with this student protest. And I couldn’t help but feel awkward for the protesters who in their zeal to protest, somehow seemed oblivious to their surroundings and their privilege.

It’s possible that later on the protest became different and more diverse, and in that case I will retract these words and feel better, I guess. But I was glad to read Tam’s post. I was having a hard time unpacking my own reactions to the Berkeley protest, and Tam’s analysis illuminated what was wrong. It’s important to have allies in all struggles, but allies need to learn to take a back seat, understand their role, and follow the lead of those whose struggle it is.

Tam gives advice on how:

As Franchesca Ramsey also says: “An ally’s job is to support.” Watch her video (below) on how to do that, and read Tam’s full post for some good insight.

Ramsey’s 5 Tips for Being a Good Ally include:

1. Understand your privilege.
2. Listen, do your homework.
3. Speak up, not over.
4. Apologize when you make mistakes and learn from them.
5. Saying you’re an ally is not enough.

Lastly, a few months ago I read this post about Imani Henry and Equality for Flatbush, who organizes people (of all colors) in the community where I live around issues of gentrification, racial tension, and discrimination against black and brown people by law enforcement. Henry says many of the same things (read that whole article too – it’s really insightful).

There are a lots of places for white people to listen and learn how to be better allies, and opportunities to put that learning into practice. Understanding our own privilege is a critical task, and it’s hard. These are all lifelong learning pathways, and as Ramsey says, we’ll make mistakes. It’s part of the process of changing and shifting the balance of power to a more just one. It won’t happen overnight, but we shouldn’t give up just because we feel awkward and uncertain.

So go to protests, get involved, know and exercise your rights to dissent and assemble, show solidarity. This movement needs everyone to get on board. Like Fannie Lou Hamer said: ‘Nobody’s free until everybody’s free’. But as white people, we need to think through our participation, join as allies, and avoid making it about us.

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Notes on PopTech

Posted in activism, development, disruption, ICTs, innovation, mobile and technology, participation, social justice, wait... what?, tagged Poptech, reflections on October 31, 2014| 1 Comment »

I first attended PopTech in 2009, and I had very little idea of what I was getting into. I had never heard of “design thinking” and though I had been working with technology and social change, I was new to the wider field of “innovation.” So PopTech was pretty mind-blowing for me. I remember meeting a couple of guys from Frog Design early on, and I ended up kind of tagging along to what they were doing a lot of the time (they were very cool about it). It now cracks me up that back then I had never heard of Frog.

Though terms like “interaction design” and “user interface” and “human centered design” were brand new to me in 2009, I do remember being surprised that the idea of working to design things together with users was seen as innovative. Design thinking can be magical, but in many ways it looks a lot like participatory development. There were very few international NGOs attending PopTech in 2009, but clearly it was a space where NGOs could learn a LOT and where grassroots and community centered organizations could share their knowledge and experience with community engagement and participation. (I’m glad to see that “hybrid” is the topic for 2015, and I hope that more of that kind of hybridization happens!)

I’m pretty sure I’ve come a long way since 2009. I’m no longer very impressed by product inventions – I’m more excited when someone is able to innovate through a whole cycle, rather than just invent a product. And that process requires a lot of thought to things like logistics and ecosystems.

Wikipedia says it well:

Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself. Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different rather than doing the same thing better.

But that’s another blog post….

So, what did I learn at PopTech 2014*?

I like humility. The stage is a hard thing to manage for some people (including myself). I noticed this time around at PopTech that I didn’t pay as much attention to the super polished speakers and the ones with lots of inspirational quotes. The theme was “rebellion” and I liked the people who didn’t necessarily think of themselves as rebels, but who were just doing their thing. I liked hearing the stories from those who seemed less accustomed to the stage, who didn’t have a Ted-Style hero story, and who seemed a bit uncomfortable in the limelight. When it comes to social change, I believe that humility is a key ingredient. Being true to a mission through and through is critical whether you are working in a non-profit or as a social entrepreneur. It was great to see folks on stage who are living their ethics through their work.

Peter Durand’s illustration of Anil Dash’s talk.

I like ethics. Speaking of ethics, I also liked the talks that emphasized the hard questions around leadership, reflection, agency and privilege. A big shout out to Anil Dash, Parker Palmer and Courtney Martin for that. Their time on stage emphasized the importance of the values behind what we do, the problem with egos (both in Silicon Valley and in social impact work) and the way egos get in the way of social impact and progress. Palmer also talked about contemplation, and that it’s not necessary to do meditation to be contemplative. (This is great news for me as I have a hard time with yoga and sitting still in general, and things like capoeira and running work better for me to clear my mind.)

“Contemplation is any way you have of penetrating illusion and touching reality—you don’t have to sit cross-legged.” @parkerjpalmer #poptech

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) October 24, 2014

Good facilitation is like good user interface design. I ran into Matt, one of the ‘design’ folks I met at PopTech 2009. I loved how he explained working on a user interface for Xbox: “You have to anticipate the users’ needs and be there for them when they need help, and then get out of the way as soon as possible.” It sounds a lot like good facilitation – whether of a workshop, a community development process, or learning – and maybe even a little like good parenting of teenagers.

It’s OK to take time out for yourself at a conference. At my first PopTech, since I felt out of my element, I felt awkward when there were times I was standing alone with no one to talk to. Perhaps thanks to all the books and articles on introverts and extroverts over the past few years, this time around I realized it was ok to sit out sometimes (I’m a bit of an introvert). So at this PopTech, I purposely found time to sit by myself for a few minutes to think, or to go for a walk or a hike and to just be on my own or be a bit quiet for a while to regenerate. It made the socializing more enjoyable and helped me to keep my mental and social balance.

It’s OK to not ask people what they do. One of my favorite conversations at PopTech was on the way home from the closing event, on the bus. I was out of energy and tired of hearing my own voice, so I just asked the person next to me to please not ask me what I did or where I was from, and could we just have a normal conversation? Luckily I was sitting next to Peter Durand, (master illustrator) and we had an amazing chat about all sorts of things, including what we both did, but in a much more roundabout way.

It’s OK to chuck the elevator speech. In addition to getting tired of hearing my own voice, one of the reasons I dread the “what do you do” question is that I don’t exactly know how to explain what I do. I tend to change my explanation according to whom I’m talking with. Not to mention, I do a ton of things, and they are hard to explain, so I am always looking for an entry point that might resonate with the person rather than a one liner. It was great to hear Courtney Martin talk about the idea of a “portfolio career” as something her mother had and something that she has as well. A portfolio career is when what you do doesn’t fit on a business card because you do so many different things, or because there is not really one description that fits all the things you work on. I love this – as it felt like permission to never try to come up with an elevator speech again.

.@peterdurand illustration of the amazing @beingtweets convo w @kristatippett, @courtwrites & @parkerjpalmer #poptech pic.twitter.com/Nc77TSTfz6

— PopTech (@poptech) October 24, 2014

It’s OK to have a vocation rather than a job. Another point that resonated with me was the point about having a vocation over having a job. There has been plenty of debate in the development community about this, and I always land on the side of development work and community organizing being a vocation, not just a job. Some say that development work should be seen as a profession, and it doesn’t matter how development workers live outside of the job, but I’ve never been comfortable with that idea. I believe that values, ethics, and ego need to be in check and well-aligned if a person wants to get involved in socially oriented work. Vocation goes further than a job, and it’s a combination of the set of values and beliefs you bring to your life’s work. It’s what you do because you just can’t not do it, as Palmer noted.

It’s OK to go to a conference just to learn and connect (but it has to be the right conference). Attending something like PopTech is luxury – I’m well aware. If you are trying to convince someone to pay for a conference, normally you have to justify it with some goals or “return on investment.” But when I go to conferences with specific goals in mind, or when I’m told to go anywhere with an “ask,” I tend to leave empty handed after some awkward interactions. When every conversation is seen as a way to “get something” I tend to be stressed, and every interaction feels engineered rather than natural. I end up with much better results when I go without an agenda and when new ideas form together with someone else based on an authentic conversation or experience. Because PopTech is the “right” kind of conference for learning, and it’s set up to help people make real and in depth connections, it’s fine to go without any agenda other than learning, sharing ideas, and meeting people.

So once again, tons of learning at PopTech and above all, great people and connections. I hope I can make it back sooner than in another 5 years!

*and this will all probably sound incredibly naive when I read it in 2019…

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Migration and my own children

Posted in migration, random, musing or confusing, social justice, wait... what?, tagged Central America, child, daniel ramirez, El Salvador, migrant, migration on July 25, 2014| 1 Comment »

If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you’ll know that I have a strong connection with El Salvador where I lived during the decade of the 1990s. Every so often I get nostalgic or something triggers me and I get the urge to write about those days or how they still impact on me and my kids. The Central American child migration situation is in the news every day now, with varying explanations and huge amounts of political manipulation, so it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately.

I migrated to El Salvador for love in 1991 and back into the US with my kids in 2001 to get out of a country that was increasingly sinking into terrifying violence and where I could not envision a future for myself or my kids. The very week we left El Salvador, the 9-year-old son of a man who owned a small mechanic shop (eg, not someone who was uber wealthy) was kidnapped and then killed by his captors when the police attempted to rescue him. My son Daniel was also 9 at the time.

Still, leaving El Salvador was the hardest decision I’ve ever made — and I had a plane ticket, family support in the US, spoke the language, had a job, and already had US citizenship, as did my kids. I cannot imagine sending my children on their own, by foot. I cannot imagine having to make the choice between the known day-to-day violence of one kind and the potential yet very real violence of another.

My ex-husband made the journey into the US in the early 1980s when he was 18. It took him four months to make it. He tells of hunger, of sleeping outside, of looking for short-term work in Mexico to replace the money that the police had stolen from him, and being chased through the fields by a man with a machete. He traveled with the clothes on his back and not much else. The heartbreak and fear involved in a decision to send a child on that journey alone is something I can’t fathom. But I know that El Salvador is no place to try to raise children right now either. Even in the 1990s, every time I left the house I wondered if I would return that evening or if I might be caught up somehow in the senseless violence that runs wild in the country. It’s something you learn to live with, and you don’t realize how stressful it is until you wake up somewhere where you feel safe.

Our decision to migrate back to the US continues to be difficult sometimes, as I wrote in this post about my daughter’s experiences dealing with family separation. It’s never easy for families to be separated, and it enrages me when the family bonds, of “others” or of “the poor” are imagined to be less strong or less meaningful than those of more privileged people or of the current citizens of a particular country. Sending a child to walk across a desert is not a decision parents make lightly. Why do people seem to understand that when it’s the “Lost Boys of Sudan” and not when it’s children of Central America?

Yesterday, my son Daniel wrote about his experiences for a newspaper called Brasil do Fato, where he’s interning for the next 3 months as part of a human rights grant he received from his university. He doesn’t elaborate about his childhood in El Salvador in this version, but his original version talked about the joy of growing up in the Barrio where we lived, playing in the alley and the rubble of an abandoned building down the road, and how things have changed since then.

Daniel’s piece gives a quick history of the US’ involvement in Central America and why it’s not an isolated issue, free of history and a broader global context. He also reflects on “how much a person’s fate is determined by the country and family into which they are born and where they fall in the order of social forces that structure the world.” It’s something he understands well, because he’s had the best of his two worlds.

Here’s the original article published on July 24, 2014, in Brasil do Fato (in Portuguese), and I’ve pasted in an English translation here:

Human Rights here and in the wider world

by Daniel Ramirez

I am Salvadoran, on my father’s side. Which means that I share, at the very least, a common history and memories of life in a Salvadoran barrio. In the barrio, I grew up alongside many children living in very difficult circumstances, just like the children who are seeking to flee the country today.

Our lives, however, turned out very differently. I am privileged to be a college student at the University of Chicago, and currently in São Paulo working as an intern for Brasil de Fato thanks to a grant from my school’s Human Rights program. This highlights for me how much a person’s fate is determined by the country and family into which they are born and where they fall in the order of social forces that structure the world.

Throughout the 20th century — especially after 1932 when the Salvadoran government put down an attempted peasant insurrection led by the Partido Socialista Centroamericano, killing up to 40,000 indigenous people in a massacre known as “La Matanza” — economic tension between the Salvadoran oligarchy and its working classes continually increased.

This conflict hit a high point during the global economic crisis of the 1970s, and in 1979 an attempted coup d’etat sparked the Salvadoran Civil War. The United States saw this as an opportunity to ensure communism would not take root in El Salvador, as it already had in Nicaragua, and funded the Salvadoran military’s campaign against popular resistance. On the left, the guerrilla militia named Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (in honor of Farabundo Martí, the leader of the 1932 insurrection) was organized to fight for the Salvadoran people.

It was a brutal war that lasted until 1992. Thousands were killed and human rights were grossly abused on a massive scale. To escape this, many Salvadorans migrated to the United States, including my dad who escaped to the US in the early 1980’s. In 1990, my dad was deported back to El Salvador, and my mom went with him.

I lived in El Salvador until I was nine, then I moved to the United States with my mom and sister.

Since I left, I’ve gone back to visit El Salvador once every couple of years. Now, my old friends have grown up. They work hard for little pay and already have families, and we’ve grown apart. There are still kids hanging out outside, but they’re older, and it seems to me like the character of their activities has become more serious.

The barrio has changed. It now “belongs” to the 18th Street gang. There’s more violence around, some of it between rival gangs, and my dad tells me to be careful who I talk to. The kid who lived directly across from us back in the day was shot and killed along with his mother right in the alley in front of my old house. If I’d been born ten years later, my childhood would not have been the carefree, playful existence that it was.

Violence, Hope and Reality

This is the type of social climate that is causing children to leave for the United States. And if we follow the chain (if not totally causal, then at least telling) from US military funding, to an intensified civil war, to refugee migration, to Los Angeles gangs, to deportation and finally to the pervasive power of gangs throughout El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, we can see how much current migration into the US from Central America has been shaped by the United States’ influence.

Right now, on the United States’ side of the US-Mexico border, thousands of children are arriving at immigration detention centers, most looking to escape violent conditions in their home countries. Meanwhile, President Obama is looking for the power to deport them as quickly as possible, intending to send Central Americans the message that the US will not aid immigrants arriving en masse to its borders, even if they are children.

United States foreign policy in Latin America extended and fueled a brutal civil war in El Salvador. Its domestic treatment of immigrants, refugees and low income communities bred gangs who then committed crimes and who then were deported back to a Central American economy and society that had no room or place for them to reintegrate in a healthy manner.

The United States is a major historical cause of the current influx of child immigrants. It would be just for United States society to take collective responsibility for the harm it inflicted in the past, and do what it can to help remedy the crisis in Central America. But, as can be seen by looking at how United States society treats its African-American community, as a country, it is not very good at taking responsibility for past crimes.

Why I’m Here

Now, I’ve come to Brazil with a critical eye in order to understand the interconnections between my Salvadoran barrio, my experiences in the United States, and the periphery and the social movements in Brazil, specifically in São Paulo, where I’ve come to live these three months.

I hope to see how diverse groups of people organize to fight for themselves. My goal is to consistently articulate my insights, and track the progress of my thinking on the theme of human rights. I’m not sure where this project will go, but I’m excited to go along with it and take it wherever it leads.

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ICT4Gov without ‘local gov?’ Shortcomings for youth engagement

Posted in communication for development, development, governance, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, innovation, mapping, open government, social justice, social media, youth, youth media, tagged governance, ICT, local government, mapping, national government, participation, participatory, politics, technolovy, voice, youth, youth engagement on February 18, 2014| 1 Comment »

This is a guest post by Daniella Ben-Attar (@dbenattar) who consults for international development agencies, NGOs and corporations on areas relating to youth participation, governance, municipal capacity building, ICT4D and peace building.

by Daniella Ben-Attar

Youth in Mali with local authorities.

ICTs are increasingly being looked to as holding great promise for improving participatory governance and citizen engagement. Mobile phones have been a game-changer in this sphere, with nearly seven billion mobile-cellular subscriptions worldwide, including 89% penetration in the developing world. Youth are at the center of these developments, both as drivers and consumers of technological innovation. This is particularly true in developing countries where the young generation is leading the way in the usage of technology to overcome social, political and economic exclusion to begin driving positive change in their communities. The largest cohort in history, youth aged 15-24 number more than 1.2 billion worldwide, with an estimated 87% living in developing countries. They are almost twice as networked as the global population as a whole, with the ICT age gap more pronounced in least developed countries where young people are often three times more likely to be online than the general population.

The combination of the “youth bulge” and “mobile miracle” has great potential to enable new responses to the longstanding challenge of youth engagement in governance across the developing world. Young citizens are utilizing simple mobile technology to innovate new platforms, tools and mechanisms aiming to amplify their voices and influence government. Youth are being proactive to play a greater role in governance through mobile-based communication avenues, user-generated information, tools tracking government accountability, anti-corruption platforms, crowd-sourcing and more. This is a dramatic shift from the days when the only way to gain the attention of a government official was through slow and cumbersome bureaucratic processes and official meetings in government offices.

A Growing Youth-Local Government Disconnect

Ironically, the impact of these efforts appears to be more pronounced at the national level than at the local level of government. Indeed, ICTs seem to be strengthening communications between youth and central government instead of enhancing connections with the closest level of governance where young citizens can be resources for community development. Applications and innovations in cooperation with government that address local issues have largely been the product of national government bodies. Most youth-led initiatives have not been successful in securing local government partnership, limiting impact. A communications gap has widened between young citizens and their local governments, which are often staffed by individuals with far less digital experience than their youthful constituents. As a result, youth and their local leaders often seem to be speaking in different languages through different media. Local government deficits in capacity and resources continue to exist as barriers, as well as the need for sensitization to youth engagement as a priority outcome of adopting and shaping ICT-enabled practices.

Most young people using technology as a way to influence governance will tell you a similar story. When expressing themselves through social media outlets and ICT-enabled mechanisms, it is usually the national political figures that are more attuned and responsive. Local leaders are far behind their national counterparts in ICT capacity and usage. National ministers and officials often use Twitter accounts, blogs, SMS and websites to engage with their citizens, who by default are largely young. While this is a positive development, it also elicits frustration from young people who feel that their voices are ignored or unheard by elder leaders at the local level where chances are greatest for tangible impact in their day-to-day lives.

President Kagame of Rwanda is a stark example. Youth have described how the president directly interacted with young citizens via Twitter and addressed concerns relating to many issues, from police violence towards youth to business ideas for urban tourism. No such possibilities existed for these same youth to approach the local authority with these locally-based needs. Even more significant, Kagame merged the national ministries of Youth and ICT in 2012 and appointed a Minister of Youth and ICT. This is a groundbreaking move both in terms of ICT and youth, with youth ministries commonly grouped with sports or culture. However, these extraordinary national developments are not reflected in the policy and practice of local government in Rwanda.

Digital mapping initiatives have been in the spotlight as a new youth-driven tool drawing attention to local issues often overlooked by government officials. While communities are benefitting from these processes, youth leaders report that these maps often do not gain the attention of city hall. For example, Kenyan NGO Map Kibera has seen its maps utilized by national ministry committees, better equipped with the capacity and mindset to absorb digital data, while city council has not been responsive to ICT-based approaches. Young leaders in Kandy City, Sri Lanka are working to bridge the “youth-local government ICT gap” which they have identified as a major barrier in engaging youth in local development. These young leaders are training municipal officials in computer skills and creating new ICT platforms for citizen-local government interaction as part of a UN-HABITAT supported youth-led training and education program run by YES – City of Youth.

Building Local Government Capacity for ICT & Youth Engagement

Partnership with local government is viewed by stakeholders as a key missing ingredient in enabling governance technology applications to have tangible results at the community level. The importance of “closing the engagement loop” and early local government buy-in is emphasized time and again by stakeholders in the field as a vital lesson learned through pilot programs. Youth organizations like Youth Agenda and Sisi ni Amani have achieved successful governance results by engaging local leaders as partners from the preliminary stages, highlighting the benefits they can gain through mobile solutions that increase civic engagement, enhance service delivery, fight corruption and bridge between local government and citizens.

Bridging the youth-local government gap will require sensitizing local officials and encouraging them to see the advantages of “listening” to youth ICT platforms, to bring them to where the majority of youth are voicing their opinions, and enable them to take responsive actions. National governments should be encouraged to help local governments be better equipped to address youthful concerns at the local level through capacity building for both youth engagement and ICT4G. This can be supported by integrating local ICT components in national ICT plans, or increased “decentralization” and integration of both youth and ICT strategies, bolstered by budgetary allocations and devolution of authority. When seeking to utilize ICT to deliver positive governance outcomes for young people, “local gov” must be part of the “ICT4Gov” equation.

This blog post draws on findings from a UN-HABITAT Report entitled “ICT, Urban Governance and Youth” co-authored by Daniella Ben-Attar and Tim Campbell.

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The accidental theme of a trip to Cape Town

Posted in activism, development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, open development, participation, politics, random, musing or confusing, social justice, wait... what?, tagged 377, addiction, bigotry, change, discrimination, gay, hatred, holocaust, India, lesbian, LGBT, mandela, race, social change, social justice on December 13, 2013| 3 Comments »

Sometimes a work trip accidentally has a theme, and my recent trip to Cape Town was one of those. I arrived on Thursday, December 5th to the news that Mandela had passed away. My cab driver was on the phone, telling someone that Friday would be a holiday. He glanced back at me and asked “Do you know who Nelson Mandela is? He’s passed.” I turned on the television when I got to my hotel and watched for a few hours, but it was already after midnight and so there was not a lot of new content.

The following day I went with a small group to an ecumenical ceremony in the square, but it didn’t feel yet like the news had really hit. I had no idea how to interpret the crowd, the messages, the speakers, the politics. As the news traveled and people began writing about Mandela and his life, I dipped in here and there. The typical conversations happened. Was Mandela and his life going to be sanitized by the mainstream media for political purposes? It was good to see people attempting to show the full man, with all his complexities. It was striking to remember that such a short time ago apartheid was alive and well, and to really think about that, I mean really really think about it, and to be reminded yet again of the fact that social change is not easy, clean, or straightforward. It’s most certainly not a technical problem waiting to be solved with a new device or invention, though clearly international and national political pressure play a huge role.

Mandela and his life became an underlying base for the conference, as I’m sure was true for much of what was happening around the world. Whether he was directly mentioned or not, his life’s work was present. I participated in sessions on ICTs and open development, ICTs and children, ICTs and raising critical consciousness. In all of them, the issues of equity and power came up. How can development processes be more open and is there a role for ICTs there? What world do we want to see in the future? How do we get there? How do we include children and youth so that they are not marginalized? How can we take a critical approach to ourselves and our agendas in development and in ICT4D? Can ICTs play a role in helping people to change existing power structures, achieve more equity and equality, and transform our societies? All these sessions were planned before anyone knew of Mandela’s passing, but talking about issues in light of the recent news and the renewed presence of him and his life made them feel more real.

Fast forward to the flights home. My first flight was the long one, from Cape Town to Amsterdam. My seat mates were two inexperienced flyers in their late 30s or so. They didn’t know where to put their bags or that they could not get up to go to the bathroom while the seatbelt sign was on and the flight was taking off. They were tattooed and looked a little rough around the edges. One of them carried a small, stuffed cheetah and wore hot pink pumps. I fell fast asleep the minute we took off and woke up an hour before we landed. The woman with the pink pumps started a conversation. Almost immediately she told me that she and her friend were returning from 2 months in rehab. They were both struggling with addictions to alcohol and sex, she told me. She was originally from Croatia and had lived in Amsterdam for years. She had recently relapsed and that’s why she went into treatment. She was returning to a safe house now, and it was her daughter’s 10th birthday. She was feeling positive about her life, yet sad that she would spend her daughter’s birthday in a safe house. She had recently revealed her addiction to her boss and received a negative and disempowering response. She was trying to be strong and accept that she was a recovering addict, learning to not feel ashamed, and working on being proud of the fact that she was moving forward. I was struck by her vulnerability and sweetness and left wondering how she would fare in a world where addiction and mental illness are so buried and stigmatized.

I got on my last flight and checked my Facebook while waiting to take off. My friend Subir had posted that two Supreme Court judges had overruled the Delhi high court’s decision and upheld the constitutionality of Section 377 – essentially ruling that homosexuality is a crime and throwing India back into the dark ages.

My seatmate on this flight started up a conversation and I mentioned the India decision. I also told him about some of the different work that I do and the various hats I wear, including my involvement as a board member with ICAAD, the International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination. ICAAD’s work is fascinating because they look at discrimination that is embedded into law, and the link between structural and legal discrimination and racial, gender, religious and social discrimination, violence, and hate crimes including those against religious minorities, immigrants, women, the LGBT community, and people of color.

As we talked, I learned that my seat mate’s mother had been a Holocaust survivor and that he was traveling to the US to attend an event in his mother’s honor. Her father survived a concentration camp, and she had been hidden and sheltered by different families for many years until the two were finally reunited and moved to the US. She spent years dealing with the psychological impacts of the experience, but now works to help children and youth understand and deal with bigotry and hate, to identify it around them even when it’s not directly aimed at them, and to find ways to stop it. She highlights that it can manifest itself in seemingly small ways, like bullying at school.

This accidental theme of discrimination, violence and hate, whether based on race, poverty, addiction, religious beliefs or sexual orientation was so alive for me this week. I met and learned more about brave individuals and the work of organizations who stand up in the face of injustice to take action at both the personal and the institutional level, raising critical consciousness to push for the changes that the world needs.

Despite our ‘advanced’ societies, our awareness of history, our facts, our data, our evidence, our literary genius, our ICTs, our innovations, we have very far to go, as I was reminded multiple times. But strong and caring individuals, organized communities, and political will can make a dent in structural discrimination and contribute to a more human society. More of us, self included, need to re-focus and work harder toward this end.

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Development + Privacy: a winning formula

Posted in accountability, activism, development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mobile, open data, open development, open government, participation, politics, privacy, protection, risk, social justice, social media, transparency, wait... what?, tagged activist, aid, aiding, carly nyst, Crisis, development, human, humanitarian, NGOs, privacy, privacy international, protection, rights, surveillance, technology on November 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

This is a guest post from Anna Crowe, Research Officer on the Privacy in the Developing World Project, and Ca rly Nyst, Head of International Advocacy at Privacy International, a London-based NGO working on issues related to technology and human rights, with a focus on privacy and data protection. Privacy International’s new report, Aiding Surveillance, which covers this topic in greater depth was released this week.

by Anna Crowe and Carly Nyst

New technologies hold great potential for the developing world, and countless development scholars and practitioners have sung the praises of technology in accelerating development, reducing poverty, spurring innovation and improving accountability and transparency.

Worryingly, however, privacy is presented as a luxury that creates barriers to development, rather than a key aspect to sustainable development. This perspective needs to change.

Privacy is not a luxury, but a fundamental human right

New technologies are being incorporated into development initiatives and programmes relating to everything from education to health and elections, and in humanitarian initiatives, including crisis response, food delivery and refugee management. But many of the same technologies being deployed in the developing world with lofty claims and high price tags have been extremely controversial in the developed world. Expansive registration systems, identity schemes and databases that collect biometric information including fingerprints, facial scans, iris information and even DNA, have been proposed, resisted, and sometimes rejected in various countries.

The deployment of surveillance technologies by development actors, foreign aid donors and humanitarian organisations, however, is often conducted in the complete absence of the type of public debate or deliberation that has occurred in developed countries. Development actors rarely consider target populations’ opinions when approving aid programmes. Important strategy documents such as the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs’ Humanitarianism in a Networked Age and the UN High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda’s A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transfer Economies through Sustainable Development give little space to the possible impact adopting new technologies or data analysis techniques could have on individuals’ privacy.

Some of this trend can be attributed to development actors’ systematic failure to recognise the risks to privacy that development initiatives present. However, it also reflects an often unspoken view that the right to privacy must necessarily be sacrificed at the altar of development – that privacy and development are conflicting, mutually exclusive goals.

The assumptions underpinning this view are as follows:

that privacy is not important to people in developing countries;
that the privacy implications of new technologies are not significant enough to warrant special attention;
and that respecting privacy comes at a high cost, endangering the success of development initiatives and creating unnecessary work for development actors.

These assumptions are deeply flawed. While it should go without saying, privacy is a universal right, enshrined in numerous international human rights treaties, and matters to all individuals, including those living in the developing world. The vast majority of developing countries have explicit constitutional requirements to ensure that their policies and practices do not unnecessarily interfere with privacy. The right to privacy guarantees individuals a personal sphere, free from state interference, and the ability to determine who has information about them and how it is used. Privacy is also an “essential requirement for the realization of the right to freedom of expression”. It is not an “optional” right that only those living in the developed world deserve to see protected. To presume otherwise ignores the humanity of individuals living in various parts of the world.

Technologies undoubtedly have the potential to dramatically improve the provision of development and humanitarian aid and to empower populations. However, the privacy implications of many new technologies are significant and are not well understood by many development actors. The expectations that are placed on technologies to solve problems need to be significantly circumscribed, and the potential negative implications of technologies must be assessed before their deployment. Biometric identification systems, for example, may assist in aid disbursement, but if they also wrongly exclude whole categories of people, then the objectives of the original development intervention have not been achieved. Similarly, border surveillance and communications surveillance systems may help a government improve national security, but may also enable the surveillance of human rights defenders, political activists, immigrants and other groups.

Asking for humanitarian actors to protect and respect privacy rights must not be distorted as requiring inflexible and impossibly high standards that would derail development initiatives if put into practice. Privacy is not an absolute right and may be limited, but only where limitation is necessary, proportionate and in accordance with law. The crucial aspect is to actually undertake an analysis of the technology and its privacy implications and to do so in a thoughtful and considered manner. For example, if an intervention requires collecting personal data from those receiving aid, the first step should be to ask what information is necessary to collect, rather than just applying a standard approach to each programme. In some cases, this may mean additional work. But this work should be considered in light of the contribution upholding human rights and the rule of law make to development and to producing sustainable outcomes. And in some cases, respecting privacy can also mean saving lives, as information falling into the wrong hands could spell tragedy.

A new framing

While there is an increasing recognition among development actors that more attention needs to be paid to privacy, it is not enough to merely ensure that a programme or initiative does not actively harm the right to privacy; instead, development actors should aim to promote rights, including the right to privacy, as an integral part of achieving sustainable development outcomes. Development is not just, or even mostly, about accelerating economic growth. The core of development is building capacity and infrastructure, advancing equality, and supporting democratic societies that protect, respect and fulfill human rights.

The benefits of development and humanitarian assistance can be delivered without unnecessary and disproportionate limitations on the right to privacy. The challenge is to improve access to and understanding of technologies, ensure that policymakers and the laws they adopt respond to the challenges and possibilities of technology, and generate greater public debate to ensure that rights and freedoms are negotiated at a societal level.

Technologies can be built to satisfy both development and privacy.

Download the Aiding Surveillance report.

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