On my way to A'dam & Mali

It's been a bit of a crazy month, spent doing some budget scenarios for different projects. For this year it looks like we'll be doing YETAM in Kenya (April) and Cameroon (July). I've been working with the countries on getting our reports from last year in as well as our forward planning for 2009. We have the project point persons selected now for Kenya and Cameroon. They are both really excited about the project. We'll continue to seek funds for Mozambique and Ghana.

My next big challenge will be to put together a training pack for the new countries. We weren't able to include a face-to-face meeting in the budget for the YETAM coordinators, so I'll plan to arrive in each country a little ahead of time to work with the staff and partners, and we'll do as much by email and skype as possible.

The past month I've been trying to get a feel for Twitter and how it could be useful to us. It seems to be a great tool for sharing ideas and learning, sharing links and initiatives. Hopefully I can keep it to a manageable level so that I can keep up with all the stuff being shared! The 'follow me on twitter' function on blogger is nice too.

So it's been a pretty cool and exciting month learning and tech wise. I'll meet with Plan's Innovations Manager in Amsterdam next week, and then all the regional communications people and some from headquarters will be in Bamako (Mali) for the meeting starting Tuesday. I'll get a chance to visit the YETAM Mali project on Sunday and another one on Monday before we start the meeting on Tuesday.... looking forward to this year. :-)

Whose Media? Which Media? Media for What?

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!!

Social Media for Social Change Workshop

I’m back from Brazil and in Kenya now for the Social Change for Social Media workshop. There are about 25 of us here and the first day was really really good. I learned tons of stuff from everyone here. It’s about 6:00 and most everyone is still here in the workshop room, doing email and stuff. We are going into “Bar Chats” in a few minutes – where people can just suggest topics that they want to discuss and form groups to do it. Photo: Lukenya Getaway









We have tried live broadcasting some of the talks – some worked some didn’t. And we’re testing a blog on a site called Maneno. The link is http://www.maneno.org/. Under SM4SC workshop you can find it.... I couldn't get my photos to post there so I thought I'd revert to here to put some up. Photo: Tonee from Wazimba blogging. Erik from White African/Ushahidi and Mativo and Anthony from Plan Kenya.

Will post more this week.

Photo: Erik starting his talk.

Swamped but still alive

Wah, even more than a month this time. I'm absolutely swamped with work these days. The 3rd World Congress preparations are taking soooo much time up -- way more than I anticipated. But hopefully things will be on track for the actual Congress in November. There are lots of difficulties as we still are trying to get everything funded. Hope we succeed.... I went to Brasilia last month for a 2-day meeting with the other cooperating partners and we got a lot done, but there are so many details related to putting on a conference for 3000 people and 300 kids. The commission I'm participating on is more related to child participation and child protection during the Congress and that is a huge undertaking. I think it will go well though.

The other big thing - the Kenya workshop for December - is also going really well. I went up to Maine this weekend to meet with some of the speakers/presenters from the different organizations that are going to be there and it was great. They were all up there attending a big conference called PopTech. (Which I couldn't afford! But they were on a fellowship). The guys are all super nice and really knowledgeable, so I think the workshop is going to be great. We're working out the agenda right now, trying to make sure that we are making it fun and informal, interactive, and also the most relevant possible for the situations that people are working in within Africa. So, how can we use social media and new technology in places where there is no electricity or no broadband? We need to be sure that we're not talking the whole week about stuff that can't happen. And that is the challenge we're posing ourselves -- what social media and new technology is relevant and useful to achieve greater impact in our existing work. I'm really excited for it.

One of the other things that I got finished was the proposal for the 6th World Summit on Media for Children. I have to wait for internal approval, and then we can submit it to the 6WSMC to see if we will partner on the child participation/child protection/social media & youth outreach aspects. That would be a really interesting partnership that we're really well suited for, so I hope it goes through. It took me forever to write the proposal with everything else going on.

The YETAM trainings are all complete, and I got the Rwanda videos on the external hard drive last week and we have a great intern names Ayla working with us to upload them and subtitle them on dotsub.com. The other things we're working on for YETAM are getting the dummy website going with AK our web company in Dakar, and then working on a curriculum for Africa and then one for 'western' or 'the north'. We're also looking at the follow up with the different groups and partners in the 3 countries. Julie resigned to spend more time with her son Noe, and her last day is on Friday, so I'm inheriting her workload! ahhhh. Once the Rio Congress and the Kenya meeting are over, I will then just focus on YETAM and a couple other things, but not so many big projects at the same time. If we are successful with the funding for the next year, then very soon we'll get going to plan next year with Ghana, Cameroon, Mozambique and Kenya.

OK well more later when there is something more interesting with photos and videos -- like maybe from the Brazil Congress!?

YETAM: 2nd Day of Rwanda Training

Today's a holiday in Rwanda so I slept in late and have some time to catch up on other work. Slept well last night but encountered my first nighly mosquito.... annoying how they buzz in your ear. And I stopped taking the malaria pills.... but I figure one mosquito won't hurt. I'll see what Gatsibo is like though....

Last night we stopped by the bank to cash the check to cover our expense for the next 3 weeks and waited in line, I kid you not, for 2 whole hours. There must have been 100 people in line ahead of us, the place was wall to wall. I realized how nice debit cards and ATMs are.... we take them for granted, but imagine if you had to manage your life in cash, pay all bills in cash, and wait in line for an hour or so every time to do it. Wow. I feel so lucky with my online banking.

We're going to hit the town tonight (I finally changed some money too!) and then tomorrow Joseph, his girlfriend and other friend Tony are going to take me around Kigali. We'll see the downtown and also visit the Genocide Memorial. I wonder how that will feel. The Kigali that I'm seeing is so calm and orderly, so nice, that I can't imagine that less than 15 years ago there was bloody mass genocide happening right here. It think the memorial will be pretty overpowering.

Well, related to work, I got some great great news from different colleagues today -- our Netherlands office is interested in funding the Social Change through Social Media workshop in Kenya in December; the German office wants to put the virtual visits on their website and may have possibilities of funding future work in that area; and the Japanese office is making a Japanese virtual visit this month and will post all our other VVs plus the Japanese one on their website. Very exciting!

At 2 I have to be on a conference call related to Plan's participation in the 3rd World Congress on Child Sexual Exploitation. Hoping my phone works well enough to make the connection. I'm participating on the Child and Adolescent Participation Commission (CAPC) with people from UNICEF, ECPAT and Save the Children in different countries. There is a lot of stuff to work out still regarding children's participation in the conference and very little time since it's happening at the end of November.... Within Plan there is a broad task force from all the different regions who are feeding into the process in different countries and regions, and the linking in to Plan's global process via the lead coordinator for it in our Swedish office. Then I'm trying to be the link between the CAPC and the Plan task force. It's a bit confusing at times with so much information and so many things happening at once and such a short time frame.

The workshop with the partners yesterday went really well, but we still have a lot to do. It was supposed to be 3 days but due to the holiday was only 2, so there's a missing 8 hours in there. We got to the point of mapping out who's doing what, but only very generally. There were different ideas of what to do about that, but most people feel that it's really important to have a precise schedule for at least the first week. Chrystel is busy today and tomorrow getting all the last supplies to take with us (stationery, first aid kit, computers, art supplies, etc.) so we agreed that I would take the draft agenda and try to put in into a grid with times/responsible people to share back with the partners. They all agreed to come in at 10 on Sunday, before we take off to Gatsibo, to finalize it. We also have to check through the equipment, make sure batteries are charged, see if anything is missing that we need, and make sure the computer software is all loaded and running.

On the home front.... Clare has decided to get her hair cut and she might do it while I'm gone (Gasp!!!). She's donating it to locks of love to make wigs for cancer survivors. I hope she at least sends me a picture of the new style so I'll know what to expect. She's developing her sense of style and stuff since she's almost 12.