Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘youth’ Category

Whose Media? Which Media? Media for What?

Posted in social media, youth, youth media on January 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »

So back to work for a whole week. Someone told me about Techcrunch. How did I not know about that before?!

Yesterday I met with a very very old friend — Renato — whom I worked with in El Salvador. I pretty much cut my teeth on children’s media work with Renato so it was really cool to meet back up with him. He’s now working as Plan’s Latin American coordinator for Child Media projects. We shared visions and seem to be on the same track even though we haven’t worked together for almost 10 years.

We agreed that he’d put some of the stuff they are doing into the same framework (Global Youth Engagement framework) that we are using so that we can begin to harmonize. They can feed into the YETAM project easily since they are also doing a lot of video in 12 countries there.

The interesting point though, and where I see the field changing and evolving, is on this question: Whose Media? When I upload something to YouTube, do I title it “Plan” i.e. Plan Rwanda Videos, or is it media that belongs to the community where we supported the project and should be titled Gatsibo, Rwanda Videos. Something I struggle with. I’m struggling a bit with this concept of ownership of the media. Is it the organization or funder’s media or are they the community’s videos? Are we mainly supporting kids with access to ICTs and media tools, or is our main goal for them to engage around certain topics and create videos to promote behavior change around those topics? I hope with time that we can look more at this and unpack it a little as social media becomes more widespread.

With Renato we talked about that issue. We talked about how he can incorporate more social media and mobile technology into the Latin American work. I shared with him about Frontline SMS and Ushahidi and Citizen Journalism and all the things we covered in the SM4SC workshop and he was super excited about building that in and having a similar approach in Latin America to what we’ve been exploring in African countries. Many organizations keep saying that children don’t have a space in media, but I was thinking, space in Which Media? If you look at internet, isn’t it more that since participation in traditional media is owned by corporations/governments and closed off to kids and most adults as well, that kids and young people have pretty much taken over new media? So basically if they have access to the tools (mobiles, internet, etc.), they DO have space in media, just not television, radio, newspapers. So how do we support that access then. Of course that isn’t everywhere, there are huge access issues, but at some point maybe it will be….

And also as regards Which Media — how, based on the goals we are trying to achieve, do we select the best form of media? Sometimes organizations make the mistake of starting a project from the point of view of which media form — . Let’s do a children’s radio project. Let’s start a video project. Let’s use social media. Let’s train them on theater. Etc. But more and more it’s clear that organizations could start with a broader framework. Such as our Global Youth Engagement (GYE) framework, which we pulled out from consultations with youth who told us that they are basically working in 4 areas and reaching out/trying to influence 4 populations: other organized youth, their families and communities, decision makers, and Plan itself. And they want to do it at the local-district-national-regional-and global levels. So for each group that they want to influence, we could start from the point of which media is the most appropriate based on the audience (other youth, families/ communities, etc.) and also based on whether it’s local, national, global, etc. So that could become a way for the youth media programs to evolve. Maybe the best media for local/families is theater. Maybe for youth/national influence it’s cartoons or large events, maybe for global it’s internet, etc.

And then we talked also about the other main question for me: Media for What? I first started thinking about that after I heard this amazing child media guru (pardon the word) guy from India named Shonu Chandra talking at a child media conference. “So kids can make media. So What!? It’s what they DO with that media that matters.” So then with all the media being done in our projects, the next step is that. What social change are we able to support kids to create with their media. There are some great examples of this. I hope we can also be really strong on this with YETAM as it continues.

So that leads us back to the idea of Social Media for Social Change. I know this has all been thought about before, but it’s becoming more clear each time I think it through.

Renato and I agreed that we’d follow up on 3 main points. 1) We’d try to have a small meeting of the minds to develop out some of these ideas somewhere. We’d use open space technology to make the agenda upon arrival. 2) he will see if they have funds to do a SM4SC workshop in Latin America 3) We will see how to collaborate on the YETAM idea across regions.

Now the one thing we forgot to do was get the standard photo of him and me so that I could post it into this blog!!

Read Full Post »

more YouTube videos up!

Posted in social media, YETAM, youth on November 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »

We got the hang of it now and Ayla’s amazing. So we have about 10 videos up on YouTube now, linked to the subtitles that we did on dotsub.com. She’s going to tackle google earth overlays and youth film festival submissions next week when she’s all done subtitling and uploading the Rwanda videos.

Meanwhile the Brazil Congress has me tearing my hair out! It’s been difficult to organize with so many moving pieces. I’m sure it will all be worth it when we all arrive and the preparatory conference with the kids starts, and they have a chance to voice their opinions in the Congress sessions.

We have provisional approval for the YETAM project next year so I’ve been working a lot on planning for that as well as finalizing this year.

The Kenya meeting on the horizon finally. I’m really looking forward to that. We’re almost done with the agenda and I’m really excited about that week and everything we’ll share and discuss.

But it’s hard to believe the year is almost over. I’ll be in Brazil for 10 days, back for 5, in Kenya for 7, back for 5 and then off to Los Angeles to finally have a break with my whole family for Christmas holidays. I hope I can stay off email and actually relax because there is another insane year ahead….

Read Full Post »

the strangeness of the familiar

Posted in YETAM, youth on September 3, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Being home again has been really strange. Like that feeling you get when you step off a roller coaster…..

I’m back in the office today after clearing out my inbox from home yesterday, well almost clearing it out. I have about 25 major things to deal with still sitting there, but all the smaller, easier stuff is cleared through.

My flight back was easy and on time, but getting in a cab and arriving home is always really weird for me after being away for a few weeks. Things seem so flat here. Even if there was no hot water and we ate the same starchy food for 3 weeks, I think I prefer Rwanda to Providence, Rhode Island. Maybe I was born to live somewhere outside the US? hmmm. Someday…..

I’ve been getting emails from the team there in Gatsibo and should have an update from them today or tomorrow on how things are going. They will have the community event tomorrow where the kids will show what they’ve been doing over the past week, do a debate, and talk about what will happen next (commitment to follow up).

more later when I hear back from the Rwanda team!

Read Full Post »

YETAM: First day of work, Rwanda

Posted in Rwanda, youth, tagged , , on August 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Ah, nothing like coming home from a long day of work and having a cold beer while updating your blog!

I got into Rwanda completely on schedule with no hitches. All my luggage arrived, no issues with customs, and no late flights. Something to celebrate for sure. But I had a
little bit of a cold and was feeling a bit narcoleptic the whole trip – kept randomly dozing off…. In the cab on the way to the airport, waiting for my plane, in the plane during the day, all night, etc. And when I finally got to Rwanda (after DC, Rome, Addis Ababa stops) I was STILL exhausted. So I had a nap, some dinner, checked emails, washed out some clothes in the sink (with all the equipment in my luggage, I didn’t have much room for clothing!) and went to bed.

Woke up at 5 with only one mosquito bite, and opened the curtains to the dawn, nice and cool, Rwanda style. The weather here couldn’t be more perfect. You’re fine in
jeans or shorts, sleeves or none. Nice breeze. Small hills/mountains all around.

I have decided to nix the malaria pills because they make me nauseous. I’ll see if I need them when I get to Gatsibo, but for now it’s not worth feeling sick all evening.

Hotel Ninzi is small with excellent breakfasts (whole grain bread, fruit, cheese, strong coffee, meat for the carnivores) and big rooms. One of the guys who had been eating at a nearby table last night invited me to sit at his table. I did, and it was fine until he asked if I was married (I lied), said his dream was to marry an American woman, and kept pressing me to tell him my room number. So I clammed up at that. He said I must be new to Rwanda because I was ‘scared’. OK, whatever. I’m not giving you my room number.

At the Plan Rwanda office I met the whole team, very young and dynamic, and handed over the equipment. Then we went over the list of partners we’d be working with – a youth organization, an audio-visual organization, an artist and a theatre group. All sound amazingly right for the project so it’s looking really good.

We went over the vision for the 3 week training, and then had lunch at Chez Robert (excellent salads and vegetarian entrees, as well as a huge selection of other stuff at the lunch buffet). I am pretty amazed at how charming and lovely Kigali is. I’m
probably only seeing one part, but so far it seems like paradise given the weather, the real food for lunch, the strong coffee, good beer, and wireless internet at my hotel….

Speaking of lodging, one thing we had to decide on was lodging for the 3 weeks training in Gatsibo District. Apparently there is a nice hotel further away from the communities where we’re working, but it doesn’t have enough rooms for everyone, so the options were to book rooms for me and a few others there, and everyone else stayed at a less nice place (I heard “not good” and “pretty bad” actually to describe it), or for us all to just stay at the ‘not nice’ place. Which is what we decided we’d
do. I think after living in the Barrio in El Salvador, it won’t be a big deal if the electricity is on and off as well as the water, which will not be hot. Maybe I will regret it later, but I think it will be fine. I think it will be fun anyway. Hope I’m right. Chrystel said she’d book the nice place on Sat/Sun nights so we can wash clothes, access internet and have some entertainment, which sounds great to me.

In the afternoon, Isaac, the new Youth Empowerment coordinator (Chrystel is the Child Rights and Advocacy Coordinator, but Isaac wasn’t hired when we had the Dakar training so Chrystel participated but now Isaac is the main point person) and I
worked out a schedule for the partners’ training. We only have tomorrow and Thursday with them because Friday is a holiday.

We planned the training like this:
Morning 1st Day: getting to know each other and the organizations, setting ‘ways of being’ with each other as a team, team building

Afternoon 1st Day: project overview, project outputs and outcomes, general outline of the 3 week training, thinking about the first week – how to use different arts, media, etc. as tools for youth to look at themselves through different lenses (self portraits, dreams, wishes, where do they fit in the community’s/society’s expectations of them? and how do they feel about society’s expectations/stereotypes of them?) and to look at the community through different lenses (what is living in the community like for a boy vs a girl? An older person vs a baby? What is the spiritual life? The
physical life? The cultural life? The community in time: what happens in the early morning? The late morning? The afternoon? The evening? What are they proud of in the community? Worried about? What are their hopes for the community? Their dreams? Their challenges and what are they doing about them? Etc)

We will close by asking the partners to think about different activities and methodologies that they have used in the past or can imagine using to help youth look at themselves from different angles and the community also from different perspectives. When possible, we will encourage the partners to co-facilitate, like if youth are doing an exercise about what their dreams are (delving into their real feelings and hopes) we can combine it with using the video cameras to record it (practice with video cameras). Or we can film a theater piece to practice using the cameras. Or the artist can work with a group of youth to create an image of the community for the community map, and look at some other aspects during the map creation. The idea is to really mix up the art forms along with the ‘work’ of pulling out the ideas and concepts on what to film/draw/paint/etc. to represent the community in the final ‘product’. We will look at the outcomes we hope to see in the youth, and
then at the different media as the tools to get there.

We will try to do the technical training for the equipment in small doses along with the other more broad exercises in the first week so that we don’t have to stop the process for a day to do dry and boring ‘training’ on the equipment, and so that the youth can see which area they want to focus on in the 2nd and 3rd week (video, photography, visual art, theatre, music). Hopefully in the process we will come closer and deeper to knowing what would help the youth have better presents and futures and this can be worked into Plan’s program planning.

Morning 2nd day: we will come back to yesterday’s discussion and see what the partners come up with for possible activities to build trust, environment of participation, and methodologies for looking at things from various angles.

Afternoon 2nd day: we will make a big flip chart for each week, define what we should have achieved by which point (by day 4 week 1 we should have some ideas for videos, by day 3 week 2 we should have shot some video footage, etc.) and together with the partners we will fill in the activities for the week.

I’m excited to meet the partners tomorrow and to put things together. The youth who will participate in the training number around 30, and they are ages 12-18 and
out-of-school youth. Most have up to a 6th grade education but were not able to continue due to financial reasons. They are from 2 different communities in Gatsibo district.

OK more later….

Read Full Post »

One week to go….

Posted in social media, youth on June 7, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Things are coming along really well for the project so far, with just a week before we leave for Senegal. All the equipment is here now except the carrying case for the laptop and a mouse. The laptop is kind of giant and heavy, but I got it with a wider screen for editing video and a bigger battery so it will last as long as possible. At least the cameras are tiny…. I’m not sure how much electricity is available where they’ll be working in Senegal. I’m not going there for the actual youth and community training in Senegal, it will be Julie the Project Director from the West African Regional office, so just hoping the equipment will work out for them.

The Senegal youth training will be the same week as the Rwanda training in July, so we’re each attending/supporting one country. Julie is on maternity leave right now after having her son Noe. She comes back to work on the 16th, the day that we start the plannning meetings in Dakar. She’s got some really cool ideas on linking the project with some other projects that they’ve done. They’ll work with a group of urban youth who have some training on film already and a rural group. They’re going to incorporate rap and theater into the arts portion of the project, using all these different art forms to analyze and speak out about the situations the youth are facing. Working with the urban and rural groups is a way also of working out differences between those two groups and helping them connect and understand each other.

In Rwanda I will be present for the training. I’m working with Amity there. She seems very cool and works like crazy. She’s found partners for every aspect of the project and they will all let the youth borrow equipment so the costs have gone way down. They are building the training together to make sure it’s as valid and sustainable for them to continue on with making arts and videos after the training with the least amount of support from Plan as possible. Given the history in Rwanda and the way radio was used in the past (there is an effort to democratize radio again) and the lack of access to internet, radio will be a big part of the project. There’s also a “community work day” called Umuganda where the communities get together and do just that. It coincides with the arts training in the community, so Amity’s organized someone to work with the youth and community to do a mural. I’m excited about being there for all that.

The first part of the training with the communities is always really cool, so wondering what it will be like in Rwanda. It was pretty striking in Togo (see below)

Alex is here and Clare didn’t get her room all the way cleaned, but oh well. He did give us that painting advice. We went to her dance recital last night and she was amazing. Then we went out to a place where they play live West African drums laid over house music. Great for dancing and getting in the spirit of things to come. We’ll go to New York on Sunday. I have a meeting with someone from the 6th World Summit on Media for Children to discuss how Plan is going to be involved in the 2010 Summit in Sweden.

Next week will be busy but good. I’m supposed to be on vacation but that’s probably not happening. I have to finish up a lot of things to get the Dominican Republic and El Salvador Virtual Visits posted. And we had a meeting on Thursday where Plan USA decided that we are going to move forward seriously on incorporating social media into our work. I’ll be on a team that is looking into it, and I’m really happy about that. First step is meeting with our office in Amsterdam (I’ll go there from Dakar on June 23) who’s working on a draft plan for it, and now the US office is pledging to be very involved. Will be exciting.

Read Full Post »

Wait… what?

Posted in social media, youth on June 1, 2008| 1 Comment »

June 1. 🙂

The official start of my secondment. And no one knows what a secondment is, and I haven’t figured out how to explain in a nutshell what I’m going to be doing. But 2 wise people (thank you DK and Lisa) have convinced me I should blog about it. Maybe someone will be interested, and if not, well, at least I have more space than a nutshell to try to explain.

The equipment for Senegal’s portion of the project is in my dining room. Amazing how small everything is. Mini cameras, mini tripods. Simple. Tiny instruction booklets with 6 pages instead of 30 like they used to be. I’m liking new media technology and today’s short attention span.

e-tickets for Clare and me are folded up and paperclipped to the inside of my trusty planner. Printed 2 pages per sheet and double sided so even they seem small and compact. Fitting.

My arm muscles are still aching from Thursday, reminding me that we’re leaving soon. Tetanus. Yellow Fever. Typhoid. Joke was on me – mine were outdated so the vaccine list expanded to include me as well as Clare.

We leave June 14, but work on this started a way long time ago. Finally it’s taking off.

I’m on secondment starting today. Wait, what’s a secondment? Basically I’m loaned out to Plan’s West and East Africa offices to help a new project get going building on work that’s been happening for the last few years. Wait, what’s Plan? Oh, well it’s a global development organization working in some 66 countries to support child centered community development.

You’ve never heard of it you say?! No worries, pretty much no one has. It’s been around since 1937 but in the US it’s a very well kept secret — unfortunately. It’s actually more known as a sponsorship organization, but the work on the ground in communities is what hooked me since I started working there in ’98 when I lived in El Salvador (and that could be a blog all of its own…).

The project: Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (or “YETAM” which sounds like some kind of hybrid creature to me, a cross between a yak and some kind of herd animal from the Lion King). YETAM is funded by Nokia. It’s being implemented by Plan’s Africa offices in Senegal, Rwanda and Mali together with local partners and communities and youth. Five more African countries will participate in the next 2 years if the funding is approved. The first virtual visit was to Uganda (and it was quite a learning experience — the videos are difficult to load which really distracts from the experience, the training was too short, the media too heavy, the cameras too big, the process not well connected with community development processes…), the next 3 were to Togo, Dominican Republic and El Salvador, done though Plan USA and we kept learning. Now with this project we’re looking at doing more of them and improving on the idea from start to finish.

The challenge: Creating multimedia virtual community profiles in 3 countries in Africa. Making sure the process of media creation is valuable for the participating youth and communities — as in how does making media build critical skills and awareness? How does it involve and benefit local people and communities? How can it be a sustainable process? And then using that media in the right ways to engage people in other parts of the world who may not really care about what’s happening in those countries. Or who have a skewed view of the continent. How to support a direct conversation between youth in different parts of Africa. And how to bring that conversation also to youth in other parts of the world. And how to do it in places where media is not readily accessible yet is impacting in a multitude of ways. What does social media mean for Africa anyway? I hope we’ll find out and I think something interesting is going to happen in the process.

It’s going to be a journey on so many different levels.

Personal. The people and places you meet when traveling and working on innovative projects impact on you in ways you don’t comprehend for years to come.

Professional. It’s finally a chance to focus on an area I’ve been doing on the side for a long time. A way to pull together a bunch of stuff that’s been floating around. A way to learn and grow in an area I’m totally energized and fascinated by.

Familial. The never-ending dilemma of how to raise 2 children (11 and 16) as a single parent who travels constantly. At least Clare gets to go with me on the Senegal trip (on my dollar of course – which is why Daniel is staying home this time).

Organizational. Plan is going to have to find a way through new media and technology for people to talk directly to each other instead of us being an intermediary. That poses lots of challenges and means things have to change within Plan too. That will be interesting to watch and participate in. How does an organization move into new ways of doing things without alienating those who have been involved for years in the old way? How do we make things work for everyone?

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts