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It had started off simple enough.
Two weeks ago, still relatively new in my position as a Northeast Regional Coordinator with AIDemocracy, I spent a few hours trawling through Social Edge and twitter. With an eye on global development and security, my goal was to discover what was being done already in the non-profit world, who was doing it best and who among these folk were the most open to collaboration.
I made a number of new friends: the people at Acumen Fund, Water Charity (not to be confused with charity:water), Be Unreasonable, Sangam India, CORD and Open Society Institute were fantastic right off the bat– They were engaging, interested and human. It was like a Utopian first day at school.
In the context of my new job and projects I had in mind, I needed to know what was being done in terms of technology support for non-profit outreach and education services. One name that came up regularly was Ken Banks, founder of Kiwanja.net
I had heard of Kiwanja in passing before, but didn’t know much about it’s main project FrontlineSMS, otherwise known as \o/ (Which, btw, is a design based on this fantastic visual here).
I wasn’t sure what to expect. Before this Saturday, I had no idea who Ken Banks is as a person, and was as wary as a product of post-post-colonialism can be of anybody who does “non-profit work” in “Africa”. I was afraid I might run into yet another individual who’s working to “save Africa” just because that’s what Bono, the UN and everyone else is talking about right now.
[And if this is something that bothers you, Aid Watch has a great post on the issue here.]
I sent an email to Ken, one of those self-introduction/basic outline of project/can we chat sometime emails. You must remember that I moonlight as a writer: after all my experiences writing lit mag queries, I was prepared to face rejection or silence.
A guest post by Patrick Cox, Global Peace & Security Advocate, University of Dallas, TX
When I had inquired into participating in my university’s International Day Festival, I discovered from the Office of International Student Services that I might very well be the only Persian on our small, private liberal arts university campus. I have yet to come across anyone else from a Persian background, so I guess my university has half of a Persian. Located near the Dallas Cowboys’ Texas Stadium in the suburb of Irving, the University of Dallas is a far cry from the consciously cosmopolitan atmosphere that I had been accustomed to at Boston University in my undergraduate years.
Held every spring in the center of campus, the International Day Festival is a meeting of cultures and a chance for members of the university community to explore other countries and their cultures and ethnic foods. This year, the Festival boasted booths with student representatives from Thailand, Latin America, Africa, India, the Arab World, and more, and it happened to fall on the day before Norouz, the Persian New Year. So, on March 19th, I packed my car with books on Iran, my laptop, an Iranian flag, Persian sweets, handcrafts, artwork, and other eye-catchers for the booth and headed to campus.
Guest post from Ruhi Shamim
As a 2008 “Innovators in Cultural Diplomacy” fellow, an initiative brought to you by Americans for Informed Democracy (www.aidemocracy.org), I gained a deeper understanding of the current progressive Muslim American identity movement. While the identity issue at hand has personal significance to me as a Muslim American, it is my commitment to the bigger picture of an inclusive, diverse democracy that fuels my work in this field.
My initiative, “The Crescent Project” was developed in response to the need to organize the Muslim community on my campus based on a common principle of open dialogue that did not exclude self-identified Muslims who have diverse views, practices, and experiences. I reached out to upperclassmen who have achieved leadership positions in a variety of aspects of the university culture (athletics, student government, grassroots organizing, the arts, the sciences, etc..) and who also represent the diversity of the Muslim experience (Black Muslims, International Students, Shi’as, Sufis, Converts, Secular Muslims…) to create a network of support for incoming freshman who are negotiating identity questions upon arriving at college. We wanted to encourage Muslim youth to be engaged in the university community without being pigeon-holed as the token Muslim and without giving up their connection to the Muslim identity and heritage. Through this project, we created open dialogue for alternate views and a forum for active community engagement.
