People can make their own media

The Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media project (YETAM) kicked off on Wednesday with a press event, and then a training of trainers until Friday. At the press launch, I had to give an overview of social media and the YETAM project. The focus was on how social media can serve as a tool for community development, social change and augmenting participation, because it is based on some of the same principles and approaches as good community development work: partnership, ownership, collaboration, sharing, openness, communication, voice, power sharing, accountability, transparency, and democratic processes. I was bit afraid to use any examples of human rights/election monitoring or mention how social media is forcing the media business to change and impacting on social ‘revolutions’, not knowing if it could be threatening to the government and media attending, so it seemed better not to bring it up! Photo: YETAM launch announcement hanging in the lobby at Plan Cameroon.


For me the most interesting part of the 3-day workshop was listening to the participants debate about whether arts/media are tools or products. People said that they really learned something from the debate, that it really sparked their thinking about what is art and what is media and what both are for. They concluded (as I had hoped) that arts and media can be tools that help youth (in our case) research and deepen their understanding of themselves and their communities during the creation process. Yet arts and media are also products that are 'consumed' afterwards, catalyzing more debate and dialogue (sometimes via more arts and media) and if successful, eventually lead to some kind of positive social change. And the cycle goes around and around. Photo: Press event for the closing of the training of trainers.

The idea of tool vs product can be a struggle sometimes when we start work on YETAM and the concept of participatory video or social media for social change and working with rural communities. Sometimes people think that we want fancy commercials or television spots or 30 minute professional documentaries or fiction films, or they don’t believe children/youth will have the capacity to make their own videos or edit their own films, or that people from rural communities can learn to use the equipment. It can be hard to explain that we don’t need to write long scripts and set up scenes with lights and big media teams with large expensive cameras, and that if we bring the technology down to simple language and hand over the camera, it’s very doable. We don’t need a week of theory before we allow the kids to touch the cameras or to paint something, that the media and the art are the means for having the discussions and theorizing about the issues as well as the end for continuing on with the discussions. And we don’t need to disrupt the community and or have 'outsiders' doing it for the media or art to matter. Local people can make their own media and it can be even more meaningful that way. Photo: Plan and partner staff working on the agenda for the youth training that starts on Monday.

YETAM Kenya

So I'm off to Kenya tonight - just about ready to head to the airport.... We'll be training in the Kwale Program Unit district with about 20 high school aged youth from one of the nearby communities. They have to go back to school on May 3, and we weren't able to negotiate any additional time with them, so we will have to fit the 2 week training into just about 9 days -- we'll see how that goes. I'm pretty stressed right now about it actually... but normally it all works out.

I'll fly from Boston to Nairobi and then take a short flight to Mombasa, stay over night there, and then will be picked up in the morning to go to the training center. I'll meet with the Plan Kenya staff to prepare, and then Thurs-Sat we'll have the facilitator's training and work out all the details for the following week with the youth. We have a basic outline that just needs fleshing out. We'll also check over all the equipment, etc. and be sure we're ready. We'll start the training with the youth on Sunday Apr 26 and run through May 3, and then I'll stay a few extra days to finish up.

I'm going to try tweeting from there to see how that goes.... could be interesting to use the YETAM twitter account for the youth to post what is going on during the training and the project, but we'll see if they are interested and if we have a good enough connection....

Communications Team Meeting

Our meeting started on Tuesday. Our challenge for the week was to pull together a regional communications strategy. We had lots of presentations on the different aspects and did all kinds of group work and analyses to come up with a good strategy that works for each individual office and then also builds up into a cohesive regional strategy. We looked both at the PR aspect of communications as well as the program/social communications aspect, at the different child and youth media programs, and also at advocacy and our different campaigns. I did a presentation on social media to stimulate thoughts on how we could use it in Plan both at the office level and in our work with youth and communities. The workshop and the whole week was really educational for me, and also exhausting. I leave tonight around 11.45 and will be home tomorrow around 5 p.m.

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!!

ooof SM4SC and what next!

Wow what a week. My head is spinning from all the discussions and possibilities from our workshop in Kenya. So it's 3 a.m. and I'm back home, and here I am again at the computer. My New Year's resolution is to work less, but it's not New Year's yet... and I'm still on Kenya time, so fell asleep at 6 and woke up at 1.30. So why not grab my coffee and get going. Photo: one of the 'take aways' on the last day.

I have a zillion ideas and things to think about. How to support the different people and offices present at our workshop to build in more social media and technology to improve our programs and reach/impact.

The last couple days were amazing, with presentations by/about youth and how they are using blogging, mobiles and other technology for health and learning. We talked about citizen journalism and thought about how to apply it to our programs and communications. And there was a LOT of discussion about how organizations need to open up to embrace new kinds of media or they will become irrelevant.

One key thought (originally stated by Ken Banks from FrontlineSMS.com and then taken up by everyone) was that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. That people should just do it, just try things, instead of asking for permission to innovate and be creative.

We learned from one participant how blue tooth was used during the Kenya election crisis to get information out to the public... and at the airport on the way home heard about arrests of activists in Nairobi and increasing media censorship.

We talked about how organizations need to modernize and open up new ways to engage the public in their work based on concepts of social media. We used SMS to send messages and talked through specific ways we could use Frontline SMS (http://www.frontlinesms.org/) to make it easier for children to get birth certificates and access their rights at citizens. Imagine instead of having to trek miles to the district capital if mobiles could help communicate and ease that process. We looked at specific existing projects and thought about how to use SMS and other social media to improve them.

We presented and discussed the YETAM project, and heard things like "every country should do this" and got great feedback for making the project more relevant and to increase its impact from the local level upwards. I had a lot of time to brainstorm with Mimi (the link between YETAM and Nokia via Plan Finland) for once about the project and to start working out the action plan for next year. Photo: Me and Mimi

We heard so many opinions from everyone, and the French translation and bi-lingual nature of the workshop meant that we heard from everyone there, whereas often those who speak French keep quiet since English is the 'official working language'. Photo: PapaSidy and Bedo.

Our external experts stayed with us the whole week and added so much to the conversation.

Really an amazing time. We tracked the workshop on a collective blog (http://sm4sc.maneno.org/eng/) so people could practice, and posted photos on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/whiteafrican/sets/72157610896848364/.

Now Mika and I will do the report. We asked people to state a few concrete ways they will follow up on the workshop and then our job along with the different offices involved is to support their work and help address any challenges or obstacles that come up. Photo: the fearless Mika!

(And we had a "Bush Dinner" with a fire and music the last night")

So our work is cut out for us next year.... and it's about 90% sure that I'll get to extend my secondment for another year to focus on YETAM's next countries and SM4SC follow up.

Yippeee!

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.

more YouTube videos up!

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....

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.

One week to go....

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.

Secondment

Right, so after all that I never explained what a 'secondment' is. It basically means that I'm on loan for a year to our West Africa Regional office to support the Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media project. It's kind of like a sabbatical. After the year, I'll come back to my existing position (working with the Youth Engagement and Action program at Plan in the US).

BTW -- I'm not actually MOVING to Africa (though the emails about how much you'll all miss me are very sweet, hehe)-- I'm working from the US, mostly from home, but traveling a lot to support the different countries. Coming up this summer: 3 weeks in Senegal in June for project planning with the teams from the participating countries, 1 day in Amsterdam in June to work with our office there on project ideas and potential funding, 3 weeks in Rwanda in July and 3 in Mali in September to support arts and media training. Possibly Kenya in December for a week-long de-brief/planning workshop with the teams including 3 days of discussion on social media and the use of mobile phone technology in the project.

And I know, I know. The last post was way too long. I promise the next ones will be short and sweet.

With photos! Here's one of Clare. She's busy cleaning her room this week so we can paint it before we leave. I've been promising for about a year. We'll get some advice on that from Alex (my youngest brother, pro-painter turned tech guru) who's coming to visit this weekend.

And videos! Once I figure out how to get them to load without errors. Is it me or is it blogspot? Only time will tell. I tried 3 times now to post one of Daniel playing capoeira in 3 different formats but it didn't work. I used this really cool Flip camera that I'm testing out for the project. It's the size of a Snickers bar, totally simple to use, and costs only $130.

Wait... what?

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 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" as we like to say. 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 next 3 were to Togo, Dominican Republic and El Salvador, all done though Plan USA (see the link to the right). 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? How can it be a sustainable process? And then using that 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 Africa. Or who have a skewed view of Africa. 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 something really cool 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 really 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 a new way of doing things without alienating those who have been involved for years in the old way? How do we make things work for everyone?