Global Research Projects, Internships, and Conferences
World Bank Innovation Fair
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IGL Students Stand Out as Social Innovators: World Bank Innovation Fair
For three days from April 12-15, 2010, the World Bank sponsored an Innovation Fair titled “Moving Beyond Conflict” in Capetown, South Africa. The event was tied to the 2011 World Development Report and represented the beginning of the Development Marketplace’s new generation of activities. The fair brought together a selected group to surface new ways of addressing conflict and delivering services to poor people in fragile states with special attention on the use of new technologies for preventing and overcoming conflict.
The Institute is proud and honored that three of the selected projects, representing 10% of the presence at the Innovation Fair, were Institute-affiliated proposals.
The 30 participants invited to the Innovation Fair went through a rigorous evaluation process that began with the Fair’s call for an on-line competition in March of 2010. According to the World Bank, organizers and judges saw more than 2,000 registered users and the submission of 223 projects from 40 countries. Of those projects, 30 were selected as finalists and were invited to Cape Town to exchange ideas, network with other social innovators, and pitch their project to a larger, well-connected audience.
IGL-affiliated projects:
Rachel Brown (EPIIC ‘08) and Cody Valdes (EPIIC '09, ‘10) were invited for their peace-mapping project "Sisi Ni Amani" (“we are peace” in Swahili), which is set to launch in July of 2010 in anticipation of the 2012 elections.
Adam White (EPIIC ‘08, '09) was selected for his project, “Social Mapping for Multi-Scalar Development,” which aims to connect Haitian communities to social networks and also connect these communities with the state and reconstruction actors.
Kyle Deitrich (Fletcher ’09) was invited to the fair for his proposal, “Youth-led Peacebuilding through Photography and Grassroots Media,” which will establish participatory youth media workshops in Liberia, Burundi, and elsewhere within the next years. Kyle is the Co-Founder of Peace in Focus, where Sherman Teichman holds a seat on the Board of Directors and Advisers.
STUDENT PROJECTS:
Rachel Brown and Cody Valdes | Adam White | Kyle Deitrich
Sisi Ni Amani - visit the website
Rachel Brown and Cody Valdes
PROPOSAL: 438
Sisi ni Amani: Mapping Peace in Kenya
Problem Definition
In 2007 post-election violence left 1000 dead in Kenya, and the country faces its 2012 elections on shaky ground. How can the youth, who perpetrated much of the violence, be channeled to peaceful activities? Recent reports show signs of an arms buildup in contentious areas of Kenya, and Kofi Annan warned that current divisions could lead to violence in the upcoming elections. While many individuals and grassroots organizations are mobilizing to promote peace and stability, much of this movement remains fragmented and disconnected. A comprehensive approach is needed to map and connect peace efforts to prevent future violence.
Project Description and Objectives
Sisi ni Amani ("We are Peace" in Swahili) provides an alternative to violence by using crowdsourcing technology and innovative media to map and connect the many disconnected peace initiatives in Kenya, strengthening the Kenyan peace movement through the 2012 elections. The online platform will highlight youth efforts, providing young people with crucial information to connect with each other and generate a network of technical and psychological support.
Sisi ni Amani will launch a new online peace platform in partnership with Ushahidi ("Testimony" in Swahili), a free and open-source Kenyan-built platform used to crowdsource and map crisis information. Young Kenyans will be able to report peace initiatives and receive updates on initiatives in their vicinity through SMS and the Web. Information from this platform will be the starting point for a comprehensive guide of ongoing peace efforts throughout Kenya, initiating a dialogue through which Kenyans will be able to identify and define the civic and youth leadership in their communities. By training Kenyan student volunteers to map crowdsourced information and conduct follow-up interviews, it will engage Kenyan youth in social networks promoting peace and stability.
Finally, Sisi ni Amani will facilitate networking sessions to bring together members of different peace efforts, building a nation-wide network of youth and adult peace leaders with different skills and knowledge. Connecting youth with non-youth leaders will promote the sharing of knowledge and experience to generate actionable solutions to the underlying causes of violence.
Innovation
Crowdsourced platforms have been used to map crises worldwide, from the Kenyan 2007-2008 post-election violence to the recent earthquake in Haiti. Using these technologies to comprehensively map peace represents a new and transformative approach to understanding strengthening civil society networks promoting stability and non-violence. Sisi ni Amani will directly engage youth in mapping Kenyan peace efforts, and mapping and connecting youth peace efforts will allow young leaders to prevent and respond to emergent violence. Focus groups will generate new local and national peace-focused networks, increasing Kenyan peace actors' ability to transform their society into a peaceful and stable one.
Demonstrated Development Impact
By strengthening Kenya's civil society, Sisi ni Amani will help young leaders repair and reinforce the social capital networks that underpin the growth of their communities. As the 2007-2008 election violence devastated local economies and tore apart the social fabric of Kenyan society, a concerted effort is needed to preempt further disintegration of communal and national stability. Capacity-building workshops based on the self-identified needs of peace actors will enhance the work of at least seventy Kenyan civil society leaders, increasing their agency and ability to prevent a repetition of violence in 2012. Finally, employing Kenyan student volunteers to map and verify crowdsourced information will provide a core group of youth with valuable violence-prevention research and technological skills.
Scalability
Peace mapping is applicable to any region suffering from a history of tensions or ongoing violence. It can leverage the strength of existing civil society actors to create crucial networks and infrastructure for crisis prevention, stability, and sustained growth. Ushahidi's crisis mapping platform has proven scalable and applicable to a wide variety of situations, from the mapping of political violence to natural disaster response. Drawing upon the success of crisis mapping in Kenya, peace mapping represents the next generation of crowdsourced networking and can be replicated regionally and globally where civic cleavages exist to strengthen civil society's violence prevention capacity.
Social Mapping for Multi-Scalar Development
Adam White
PROPOSAL: 873
Social Mapping for Multi-Scalar Development
Problem Definition
This initiative aims to identifying the methodology to technically map social capital and networks in developing communities. Understanding the social networks and connections that are existing in communities must be a fundamental process in any development process, especially those which are focused on delivering the fundamental services. Many development projects of different scales are currently struggling to identify best practices in community partnerships or project localization. Despite true expertise in many of the technologies or procedures necessary for water, transportation, medical and even some educational services, projects often struggle from poor understanding of a local culture and social background.
Project Description and Objectives
This project's key objective is to identify ways that technology may be used more creatively to allow local communities to explain often opaque social networks to each other, neighboring communities, and external organizations. Making these networks more visible and engaged will help to change emphasis on overly local or overly general projects to deliver important services. This network mapping will enable delivery of customized, scalable, accessible and sensitive development.
Beginning in one region, the project will simultaneously research to understand (1) the local social networks and capabilities, and also (2) technical tools and existing processes that are most accessible. Following the earthquake in Haiti, Ushahidi, a crisis mapping platform, enabled individuals with cell phone's to self-identify and broadcast their needs. This technological and humanitarian leap forward allowed individuals to connect into services. Applying more involved methods, the same technologies which currently function on a very individual level can allow people to self identify with their social connections, and then the tools can be reworked to interact with the network more organically, rather than always straight from the top to the bottom.
Our objective is to interact between the 'bottom-up' and 'top-down' levels by understanding the networks that span these ranges and link citizens to their state. Social Capital and Social Networks are the larger collections and organizations of people between the individual and national scale, and a more thorough understanding of these networks, both from within and by outsiders will be a fundamental enabler to development.
Innovation
Current technological infrastructures in development are centered on the individual scale. The internet and SMS are both technologies that are for individuals. As social networking in the developed world through website enables new social structures similar mechanisms and conversations can be employed to map existing social networks.
By developing social mapping techniques to integrate with SMS and internet capabilities we can 'de-atomize' the role of technology in delivery and response, and similarly build upon these individualistic technologies to construct the more realistic social structures that are essential for development.
Demonstrated Development Impact
Current discussions are trying to identify the necessary interventions to rebuild Haiti after years of poverty and the recent disaster. Amongst the first relief initiatives was Ushahidi, which successfully mapped thousands of sms reports submitted to their free local phone number. This reports were followed up on by international responders on the ground and saved countless lives, helped pinpoint areas of need, and better understand the layout of problems and relief. Our team is closely integrated with the Ushahidi Haiti project.
A very different initiative which predated the earthquake is the student led RESPE project at Tufts University and based in Balan, Northern Haiti. This initiative has experimented with different methods to integrate locally through more conventional research focus groups and more innovative multi-directional exchanges, which brought community members to Boston. Both groups illustrate strong but differing impacts, and the intersection between the two has paved the way for this innovation.
Scalability
Through previous research, vague social concepts are interpreted very differently by locals, academics, and international NGOs. Integrating technology into the shape and mapping of these networks will allow individuals too become a part of actual networks.
This project is thus inherently scalable both locally and abroad. First the objective is to interact with multi-scalar networks in Haiti, to be able to scale up individuals. Second, the reuse of the methods and the technologies will allow the network mapping to be applied in other contexts and allow it to become a vital step in many development processes.
Youth-led Peacebuilding through Photography and Grassroots Media - visit the website
Kyle Deitrich
PROPOSAL: 223
Youth-led Peacebuilding through Photography and Grassroots Media
Problem Definition
Media and visual culture often reflect and perpetuate social ills, including stereotypes of misunderstood cultures, marginalization of minorities, and violence among young people. Rather than being seen as leaders, youth are often typecast as victims or perpetrators. We work to reverse this influence by fundamentally changing the way young people relate to media. Peace in Focus teaches young people to be mindful consumers and responsible producers of media. Specifically, our workshops teach peace photojournalism to inspire under-served young people to engage in activism and service through journalism and photography. We focus on post-conflict or fragmented communities to empower teens to cope with and overcome social tension. Our innovative curriculum combines leadership development, conflict transformation training, and peace photojournalism to provide youth with new and creative skills to capture their commonalities, understand and re-frame conflict, re-imagine their communities, and communicate a vision for peace.
Project Description and Objectives
Peace in Focus provides peace and media literacy education to marginalized youth in fragmented and post-conflict communities. Our workshops, after-school programs, and exhibits facilitate positive relationships, foster communities, and promote cross-cultural understanding by training youth in creative conflict transformation. We strive to break down socially constructed barriers that lead to conflict and violence; in their place, we nurture shared interests and develop commitments to positive social change.
Our workshops offer intensive photography, leadership, and non-violence training aimed at supporting youth voice and civic engagement. The seminars encourage critical thinking, problem solving, and collaboration between diverse groups by teaching them to re-frame adversarial images and perceptions. Our blog and "world connect" projects link sister locations in Boston, Burundi, and Liberia, reducing the perceived distance and difference between young people around the world. Photography exhibits and a youth journal engage the larger community to give participants a chance to share their experiences and vision for peace through words and images.
Within the next five years, we plan to leverage our programs and network to create a global Peace in Focus Institute, which will offer "train-the-trainer" service learning programs, hold peace photojournalism workshops, develop after-school programs for teens, organize international symposia, and disseminate best practices in creative peacebuilding. A leader in peace and media education, the Institute will engage teens, young professionals, and academics in this field to ensure program sustainability, innovation, and impact. Our programs will address the four root causes of youth violence by providing conflict transformation education, extra-curricular and employment opportunities in peace photojournalism, media literacy training, and a platform for public and civic engagement.
Innovation
While youth development organizations increasingly incorporate participatory media into their programs, few use it as a tool for conflict transformation. PiF is the only organization of its kind to apply symbolic photo concepts (framing, focus, perspective, etc) to communication, leadership, dispute-resolution, and non-violence training. Other organizations aim to give youth a voice, a technical skill, and a medium for creative self-expression. We share these objectives; however, we place equal importance on youth leadership and youth action. Our programs stress the importance of community leadership to affecting social change.
Peace in Focus is innovative in its approach, model, and impact:
Photography is not only a tool for documentation and self-expression, but also an instrument of social change.
PiF Institute offers a social entrepreneurship train-the-trainer model to develop leadership at all levels.
Our programs are accessible not only to the youth that participate in them, but to communities and sister locations, as well. Images and visual stories can be easily shared around the world in photography exhibits, online networks, new media, journals, and books. We strive to build this global network of youth narratives to nurture cross-cultural understanding and appreciation for diversity.
Demonstrated Development Impact
Since 2008, Peace in Focus has trained nearly 100 youth in grassroots peace photojournalism in Boston, Burundi, and Liberia. These teens learned transferable skills in photography, leadership, communication, and peacebuilding, creating opportunities to generate income and expand the social impact of our work. After the training, one group went on to launch a youth journal with our support. The stories and photographs that have emerged from our workshops have contributed to a youth narrative that is often overlooked or under-represented. Thousands of people have heard our young people's message of peace through our photography exhibits, TV and radio interviews, blog postings, and community events.
In 2010, Peace in Focus will increase its impact by launching after-school programs in three locations. Additionally, we will hold another round of workshops in each country. We estimate that at least 100 new participants will enroll in our programs this year, and over 10000 will view their artwork in community exhibits. As a result of our programs, youth previously on the margins of society (former child-soldiers, delinquents, refugees, etc) begin to play an important role in deciding how their communities overcome violence and division. We measure progress toward these outcomes by the number of youth trained, projects and exhibits realized, the level of collaboration between participants, the incidence violence, and the level of youth leadership in the communities we serve.
Scalability
At present, Peace in Focus holds youth workshops, after-school programs, and photography exhibits in Boston, Burundi, and Liberia. However, our long-term vision is larger. By 2012, we plan to establish a Peace in Focus Institute and by 2015 have a presence in 10 countries. This is possible because of our partner-driven model. We are currently building partnerships with community-based organizations in Sri Lanka, the West Bank, Uganda, and Haiti, and are working to strengthen the capacity of existing organizations by training them in new approaches to conflict transformation and youth development, and by building a global network of youth leaders and peacebuilding practitioners. The Institute will offer field-based service trainings, workshops, after-school programs, and international symposia around creative approaches to peacebuilding. The Institute will advance this field through research and service and will train young people to train other youth in creative approaches to peacebuilding. As Peace Fellows, graduate students and young professionals will learn to design and implement creative peacebuilding projects using our curriculum and will carry out their own workshops with international partners as a part of the service-learning component of our program. Thus, each person we train will train another group of teens. This social entrepreneurship model is innovative because it not only places young people in leadership positions and gives them field-based experience, but it also ensures program sustainability and significantly enlarges our organization's impact. Our vision is to serve as a leader in arts and media-based peacebuilding by creating innovative curricula, developing international programs, and building a powerful global network of academics, practitioners, and youth.