We have finalized our training/consultation schedule for the next four months. If you live in or near any of these cities, please consider joining us for a private training or a consultation! There will be special discussions on e-waste management, broadband advocacy and mobile entrepreneurship in many of our trainings this go around.
A full listing of what we will be doing in the trainings can be found on our Upcoming Events page. We still have some open time slots this summer for training/consultation opportunities, but it is first come, first serve. If you are interested in scheduling time or our fees, please refer to our Services page. We reserve the right to cancel or postpone in-person trainings or consultations based on travel warnings issued by the US Department of State. Any questions? Email info[at]globalwireonline[dot]com.
Last week President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan during which he signed a long-term security agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that allows for the United States to potentially keep military forces in the country in a support role until 2024. All U.S. combat troops are expected to leave Afghanistan by 2014. Many analysts have wondered if Afghanistan will fall back into the Taliban’s hands and any progress made in the country will be reversed once the U.S. leaves. However, there seem to be many efforts to use the media as a catalyst for good governance in Afghanistan for years to come.
Afghan radio network Salam Watandar (“Hello Countrymen”) was officially inaugurated April 8 as an independent, non-governmental Afghan organization. It was originally established in 2003 by media advocacy group Internews and funded by United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives.
…Beginning as a small radio production service that provided content to a handful of independent provincial radio stations established by Internews, the network has grown to 47 radio stations that broadcast in 29 Afghan provinces with the capacity to reach over 10 million listeners. Through these partner stations, Salam Watandar broadcasts high-quality programs on current affairs, culture, social issues and sport, and has served as a strategic hub for mentoring and training its partner radio stations…
One of the key elements of Salam Watandar’s success is its ability to communicate with listeners not only through traditional phone calls, but also through text messaging. There is a strong interest in using tech innovation to advance Afghan civil society.
…Nationwide, radio has the highest penetration among Afghans, with 73% reporting they own a radio. Access differs dramatically between provinces, between rural and urban areas, and between men and women. In Herat, for example, 86% of Afghans own a television, while only 22% own radios. Internet access, however, remains low nationwide, with only 1% reporting access to Internet in their homes.
There is a push to give technical training to all Afghan citizens, but especially for women. Afghan women used the opportunity of International Women’s Day recently to participate in women-only technology training courses. Participants learned how to use both new and traditional media tools to express themselves and enhance their advocacy efforts against gender discrimination.
“New media is not just for journalists,” said a participant named Parwana from Women Activities & Social Services Association (WASSA). She continued, passionately exclaiming, “As an Afghan woman who works directly in society and in close contact with different people, this [new media] will allow us to transfer our voices and pain.”
There are also efforts to reach out to Afghanistan’s tech start up community. Internews and the Afghan Ministry for Communications and IT hosted the Kabul Innovation Lab last February to look at ways to use technology for improving the country.
“There was no functional infrastructure after 2002 unfortunately, and we had to basically start from scratch,” said Javed Hamdard, an Afghan ICT coordinator who served as a project judge, speaking to the BBC about the event. “As we are speaking, there are more than 17.96 million mobile subscribers. If we measure it from that short period of ten years then the growth and achievements and progress in the ICT sector in general, and the telecommunications in particular, it has been tremendous.”
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots, which resulted in 54 deaths, thousands of injuries, nearly a US$1 billion in property damages and a renewed discussion on American race relations. This was all sparked by a private citizen named George Holliday, who videotaped Rodney King’s encounter with the Los Angeles police on his Sony Handycam. The blurry video turned what would have otherwise been a little known scuffle into a worldwide media sensation.
Particularly, the case highlighted the allegations of racial profiling and police brutality within African-American communities. As a matter of fact, Holliday said he tried to reach the Los Angeles Police Department to find out what had happened to King. When he was unable to get answers, he contacted his local TV news station, KTLA, and sold his video to them for US$500.
During the riots, there were also other citizen journalists, like Timothy Goldman, a then unemployed former Air Force officer, who videotaped the violence, including the beating of white truck driver Reginald Denny.
The videos were revolutionary at the time because this happened long before YouTube, Twitter and the Internet in general came into existence. Without these videos, history would have reflected differently today.
A few days ago King reflected on the significance of the videotape and the Trayvon Martin case.
“I’m hoping he [Trayvon] gets justice for his family, ’cause he’s no longer here, so for his family,” he said, adding, “Luckily, I got [my attack] seen on tape.”
When King said this, it made us think about the initial reaction to Martin’s murder. When the Martin case first gained mainstream media attention, we were actually looking for a video, a photo or some kind of strong documentation online that showed the altercation between Martin and shooter George Zimmerman.
In this age of everything being caught on video and distributed throughout social media, we automatically expected that there was a video of Martin’s shooting somewhere on YouTube. This isn’t because we have a creepy desire to see someone’s gruesome death, but we could have used a video to see evidence of what really happened that night, which would have help bring justice to the case. The only circumstantial evidence is the 911 call, which has also come into question for its credibility.
So this is why Holliday plays such an important role in this case and its impact in mobilizing citizen journalism.
According to Holliday, he met face to face with King several years after the beating. They ran into each other at a gas station one night. As Holliday describes it, “He says, ‘Yeah, you don’t recognize me.’ And I said, ‘No,’ and he says, ‘Yeah, you saved my life.’ And so then I knew who he was.”
Global Wire Associates Founder Talia Whyte originally wrote this post on Global Wire’s companion blog.
Lately, there has been a lot of talk about how to be “more green” in our everyday lives, and in particular how to improve the global economy. In the last year, I have looked at the ways my company Global Wire Associates and my freelance journalism workoperate and how I can create a smaller carbon footprint.
As a new media consulting firm, Global Wire Associates is in the business of using technology. However, with the growing problem of e-waste, we felt that it was our responsibility to use electronics with more mindfulness. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, it is estimated that 20-50 million tons of discarded electronics are dumped into landfills around the world, mostly in developing countries, every year. Electronics include old mobiles, televisions, microwaves, computers and more. However, most of the time it’s not because these gadgets are broken; they’re being dumped in favor of newer versions.
Landfills with e-waste create serious problems in the long run. Toxic chemicals in electronics can leach into the land over time or are released into the atmosphere, creating severe health and environmental hazards in nearby communities.
Even if you take your old electronics to recycling sites, there is no guarantee they will be recycled properly. This is partly because it is expensive and labor-intensive to properly recycle e-waste in many developed countries, as most environmental laws in these countries require e-recyclers to use environmentally friendly processes.
So, for the last year, my company decided that when it is time to purchase any new equipment – cameras, computers, mobiles – we made sure that old or broken equipment was repairable first. We also donate old electronics that are not deemed useful for our purposes to other needy individuals or organizations. Before we consider making new purchases, we try to buy older but usable models whenever possible. If the electronics are beyond repairable, we properly recycle them.
Not only are we doing our little part to save the health of the planet and its people, but it has also made us feel really good about ourselves and wanting to extend our enthusiasm with others. So this year we launched our Recharge E-Waste campaign to make others aware of the global tech waste problem. We not only plan to use our website to have discussions about proper recycling, donating and/or selling of used electronics, and turning electronics into art and design models, but we are also seriously thinking about launching an e-waste management initiative later this year.
Our green awareness has also extended to other areas in our operations, like doing more web conferencing with clients instead of traveling, cloud computing and using green office supplies. Of course, I also use recycled cameras for my freelance video journalistic gigs. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that can make a big difference in our world.
We have finalized our training/consultation schedule for the next four months. If you live in or near any of these cities, please consider joining us for a private training or a consultation! There will be special discussions on e-waste management, broadband advocacy and mobile entrepreneurship in many of our trainings this go around.
