A Different Way Home: Resettlement Patterns in Northern Uganda (posted May 2010) [text]Enhancing the Capacity of the Externally Displaced in the Post-War Reconstruction of Sudan: An Exploratory Qualitative Study on Development, Civil Society, and Good Governance with Sudanese Refugees at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya (posted May 2010) [text]From the Right to Asylum to Migration Management: The Legal-Political Construction of 'A Refugee' in the Post-Communist Czech Republic (posted July 2010) [text]Internally Displaced Persons: Protection Measures Under International Human Rights Framework (posted June 2010) [text]Media Representation of Human Trafficking in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada (posted July 2010) [text]News Frames and Story Triggers and in the Media’s Coverage of...
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From expanding awareness of global health issues in the United States, and implementing health education in Haiti, to addressing tribal conflict in Kenya, and changing the perception of Turkey in the Middle East, soap operas, television and videos are helping to save the planet.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently invested over $1.37 million in the Hollywood Health and Society Global Health Initiative, a project of The Norman Lear Center, in partnership with the World Bank and the United Nations Population Fund. HH&S works to increase global entertainment-education efforts for United States television programming:
The grant enables HH&S to work to increase U.S. public support for global initiatives that reduce health disparities and disease around the world. The main...
(Beirut) - The Lebanese government should immediately drop criminal charges against three men for posting comments critical of President Michel Suleiman on Facebook, Human Rights Watch said today.
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Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars: Now a Radio Series
Hassan Masum points out that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has done a radio series based on the book, Climate Wars, and made it available online...
2008
The Fallacy of Examples, and the Problems of Extrapolating from Media
Ethan Zuckerman explores the difference between 'typical' examples and 'exceptional' examples, and how their differing uses in the media affect our understanding of people, places and issues...
2005
Getting Smarter About Getting Older
James Cascio writes that longevity already forces our societies to change, so we should take advantage of the moment to think about what we'd like a long-lived world to look like. As an example, he explores...
Geoengineering is fast becoming a mainstream debate.
For some, the most worrisome thing about geoengineering is the idea that, once people know about it, they will think of it as a technological quick fix that makes it unnecessary to control emissions of greenhouse gases, an effort everyone takes pains to point out is by far the most important step to be taken now...Still, if geoengineering is not yet an idea whose time has come, it is definitely gaining traction.
So writes Cornelia Dean in the New York Times. She reports on the new books out on geoengineering, including:HACK THE PLANET, by Eli Kintisch
FIXING THE SKY, by James Rodger Fleming
COMING CLIMATE CRISIS, by Claire L. Parkinson
Additionally, Dean recounts her experience at the Asilomar International Conference on...
(New York) - Insecurity and political repression are increasing in advance of Rwanda's August 2010 presidential elections, Human Rights Watch warned today. In the last two days, an independent journalist has been killed, the leader of an opposition party has been detained by the police, and other opposition party members have been arrested.
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Two years ago, Worldchanging listed “Human Footprint” in its Holiday Gift Guide, but as far as I could tell no one here had offered a review of the film. Due to a recent flu that left me bed bound, I was able to watch the movie and I thought it would be of interest to Worldchanging readers if I offered a bit more information about it.
In true National Geographic fashion the film is a visual feast, with both captivating still life images and dramatic video sequences used to illustrate the vast quantity of stuff the average American uses over the course of a lifetime (where a lifetime = 77 years 9 months). The narrative is simple: the film follows an American boy and girl from birth to death and shows their average consumptive footprint. For example, at the beginning we learn...
Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
Closing the Climate Change Accounting Loophole -- With a Billboard
Mindy S. Lubber at the Huffington Post reports on a 67-by-32 foot billboard "Carbon Counter" outside New York City's Penn Station that digitally shows the real-time, cumulative pollution - the tons added to the atmosphere every tenth of a second - we are emitting that is causing the planet to heat up...
2008
Nothing for today!
2005
InstantSOUP for the Fabricator's Soul
James Cascio looks at InstantSOUP -- Instant Satisfaction Potentially Useful Objects -- a hardware and software toolkit designed to introduce people to "physical computing"...
Other recent "look backs":
June 17
June 18
June 21
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Nigerian food blogs come into their own. From the detailed Avartsy Cooking whose author attests that "food that I eat is usually spicy." To blog pioneer Alhaji's Groove whose deliciously visual creations now come with recipes. And over to the energetic My Kitchen and encyclopedic Spice Baby.Image courtesy of Avartsy CookingWatch Avartsy Cooking video...
Amadi Press:"...publishes books, pamphlets, journals and magazines of special interest to Igbos in particular and Africans in general. Our hope is to record, celebrate and promote, in various ways and forms, aspects of authentic, traditional Igbo culture before they finish melting away..."while at Wahali: you can search and buy books. You can pay for the books online (with your interswitch ATM/Debit Card or VISA Card ), or offline by paying the total cost of order placed into our designated bank nearest you. You will pay to the bank after placing your order online. Choose bank account payment as method of...
Journal of Refugee Studies, vol. 23, no. 2 (June 2010) has just been published. Contents include the following:Matrimonial Strategies and Identity Relations between Palestinian Refugees and Lebanese after the Lebanese Civil WarGovernance, Governmentalities, and the State of Exception in the Palestinian Refugee Camps of LebanonMental and Physical Health Consequences of Repatriation for Vietnamese Returnees: A Natural Experiment Approach [see also earlier working paper]Beyond the Discourse of Trauma: Shifting the Focus on Sudanese RefugeesLet Them Land: Christmas Islander Responses to TampaRefugees as People: The Portrayal of Refugees in American Human Interest StoriesCyprus: Peace, Return and Property Also included is the final conference report for IASFM12, held...
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Australia,
periodicals,
Palestinians,
mental health,
asylum seekers,
returnees,
Cyprus,
Vietnamese,
Lebanon,
Media,
Sudanese
Looking back one, two and five years ago today (give or take a day) on Worldchanging:
2009
Funding Grassroots Solutions: Creating Skunkworks for Local Innovation
Grassroots innovation can be an incredibly effective strategy for building community systems that are useful, lasting and resilient. The power of local innovators is their ability to focus on what’s do-able today, with resources available right in the community. Given the right support, a network of community innovators could serve as a global skunkworks, with those closest to the ground generating, testing, and sharing new ideas for solving what may seem like intractable social problems. The biggest challenge, however, is figuring out how to take a lot of great little ideas to a bigger scale...
2008
The Ninja Gap...
Cory Doctorow writing in Boing Boing:Bangladesh's Infoladies ride from village to village on bicycles, toting netbooks and mobile phones, and set up infobooths where they use net-gathered info to teach hygiene, help with childbirth, assist with crop problems, and so on. There's an army of them. "An InfoLady's netbook is loaded with content especially compiled and translated in local Bangla language," says Mohammed Forhad Uddin of D.Net, a not-for-profit research organisation that is pioneering access to livelihood informationMore...
Christopher Reddy, an associate scientist and director of the Coastal Ocean Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, asks "What if carbon dioxide were as black as oil?" in a great new article on CNN.com. This is a very thought provoking question and well considered by Reddy. In his article, Reddy compares and contrasts American concern for, and understanding of, the Gulf Oil spill with the larger threat of carbon dioxide:
...while we have readily and rightfully committed ourselves to understanding the cause of the spill, its effects and how to help restore the affected Gulf Coast region, we still can't seem to come to grips with a much more dangerous, far-reaching pollutant that is changing the fundamental chemistry of our entire planet: carbon dioxide.
Why the...
Ory Okolloh at WEF on entrepreneurs you should know:One thing that struck me this year (and last) were all the young entrepreneurial Africans who’d managed to circumvent the perennial challenges we complain about when it comes to doing business in Africa, who’d managed to build strong, profitable, businesses , and who the had ambition to scale even further heights. And this are not just businesses that make money but that touch on critical sectors for the future of Africa – media/information; technology; infrastructure; agriculture. The kind of stuff that makes you want to run back to your hotel room and start putting a business plan together instead of tweeting in my case Anyway, I thought I’d share the profiles of some of these entrepreneurs with you…always important to keep...
Mary Tembo founder of Media 365:"...is an entrepreneur with a passion for media and how it is used to promote solutions to social challenges. Mary and her sisters founded Youth Media that published the TrendSetters a magazine that won numerous international awards for encouraging honest discussion on matters lifestyle and health among the youth. She was co-owner of the Spar at Cross Roads before she started Media 365 who recently produced the popular mini-series Club Risky Business on ZNBC and Muvi TV. Mary Tembo will be part of a panel discussion on online content in Zambia...Via...
Note: Please bear in mind that this is a "first read" of a very large piece of legislation. It was researched and written within 24 hours of the bill's publication.
The Kerry-Lieberman climate bill emerged yesterday mid-morning, weighing in at 987 pages. (Hey, changing the entire energy economy ain't easy.) Like the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the US House of Representatives last summer, the American Power Act is a comprehensive energy and climate bill. That means it touches a wide range of issues, from nuclear energy development to electric vehicles to offshore oil drilling. To find the full text of the bill, as well as several summaries, go to Senator Kerry’s website.
As I examine the nuts and bolts of the bill, I’ll post updates for readers. I am not, however, going to...
From the IITA video channel:"...Chris Okonkwo in a training video which shows step by step how to propagate yam through...
Bunmi Oloruntoba contends:...with the whole idea of wikis, open source and fast broadband networks enabling video, dubbing or captioning, suddenly the idea of knowledge building by talking about science using local languages actually seems doable and, even more importantly, sustainable. Not to mention that it also gives a whole new meaning to sustainable science development. The video below looks at scientific knowledge building using wikis and other web 2.0 tools to pass along agriculture methods at the local level, but it also hints at how one could pass along science at the local level if there was the language to talk about it More...
234Next interviews Biodun Caston-Dada founder of Acada magazine:"I decided to start Acada because of my passion for publishing and educative cum entertaining magazines," he says. "I raised the initial capital we used in starting the magazine through other businesses that I do and also through family and friends' donations who I spoke with when starting up and that believed in the project. It's a passion thing. You know if you are passionate about something, it keeps bothering you until you give it a shot."...His passion has paid off. There is hardly a major campus in the country today where Acada hasn't reached: if not with the magazine's circulation, then at least with the ubiquitous stickers, carrier bags and T-shirts. The magazine also circulates in schools with strong Nigerian...
Harry Dugmore of Rhodes University is working on a pioneering project to provide news and information into urban neighborhoods in South Africa via mobile phones. The project – Lindaba Ziyafika (the news is coming) – is designed to create and distribute news in the context of the “techno-social flux” that South Africa is experiencing.
South Africa has low but improving broadband access, growing from a low base. But there’s rapid uptake of cellphones – almost 100% of families have access to them. The phones are getting faster and smarter and an increasing number have access to the internet. But costs of internet access in general are absurdly high.
Africa, as a whole, suffers from low journalism density. (Actually, South Africa probably doesn’t – it appears to have...
234Next discusses movie production with a co-founder of BRV Films Nigeria,Tokunbo Falope:‘Silent Scandal’ was a risk. Contrary to his thinking, his talent could not compensate for organisational lapses. Pre-production was done in a couple of days. Audition and shooting were simultaneous. Location was not known before hand. His efforts at ensuring proper lighting were regarded as a waste of time and money. He learnt his lessons though and has decided to personally produce his next movie.More herePhoto courtesy of...
Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
Worldchanging Review: Planet Forward
Sarah Kuck reviews a new web and TV project called Planet Forward, a show that focuses on the dialogue between local people, organization leaders and government officials on planet-focused topics.
2008
Book Review - An Atlas of Radical Cartography
Add this book to your bookshelf! An Atlas of Radical Cartography is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration.
2005
Plastic Electronics and the Ink-Jet Future
Five years ago 3-D printing digital fabrication technology was just beginning. James Cascio explores the emerging new applications of...
(Johannesburg) - Political repression and other rights violations ahead of the April general elections in Sudan threaten prospects for a free, fair, and credible vote, Human Rights Watch said today.
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Sudan,
Darfur,
International Justice,
War Crimes/Crimes Against Humanity,
International Criminal Court,
peace and justice,
Africa,
press freedom,
Press Release,
Free Expression,
Media
Founded by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo and Yehudi Van de Pol, Alkebu:...was initiated to develop the production of inventive, mindful and authentic works in the resourceful worlds of audiovisual and new technology...it aims at producing challenging work by exploring the narrative possibilities of creative imagination, documentary, feature films, music videos and art based...
(New York) – Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign relations chief, should raise human rights concerns with Syrian officials during her visit next week and seek specific commitments to improve their record, Human Rights Watch said today.
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Nollywood Uncut, for in-depth news, reviews, gossip, clips, gossip on the Nigerian film industry:via...
(New York) - Libya's moves in late January, 2010, to block access to at least seven independent and opposition Libyan web sites based abroad and to YouTube is a disturbing step awayfrom press freedom, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should restore web site access immediately, Human Rights Watch said.
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(New York) - The Sri Lankan government should immediately end its post-election harassment of media outlets and ensure protection of journalists from attack, Human Rights Watch said today.
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(Washington, DC) - The Chávez administration should not abuse its authority to compel broadcast of presidential speeches that promote the government's political agenda, Human Rights Watch said today.
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