On October 15, we kicked off the eight Policy Leadership Cohort. Please join us in welcoming our next group of Policy Leaders:
Realizamos nuestro primer entrenamiento en español el 8 de mayo, del 2015, en Los Angeles, CA con IDEPSCA. El entrenamiento se enfoco en cubriendo comunicaciones en linea para organizadores comunitarios. Hablamos de los diversos canales de comunicacion, temas como el tono y evaluacion de audiencias, y luego los procesos vinculados a los objetivos estratégicos de la organización.
The Humanitarian Technology Festival on May 9 and 10 is Aspiration's first foray of participatory event methodologies into the digital response space. We hope that this event supports creative dialogues and capacity building in humanitarian aid and disaster response efforts. In a recent blog on Civic Media, Willow explains the framing of this program and event:
"The very way we deliver aid perpetuates the need for more aid... When people need lodging after a hurricane, they're either told to evacuate and/or they're put into temporary homes, away from neighbors and family. There is little impetus to return and rebuild both social and tangible structures. People are uprooted, and must start from scratch. When, instead, we see that people don't just need lodging but in fact need social fabric, responders (and the technologies used for response) can focus on how to maintain family and neighborhood ties."
Nothing signals summer like the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, happening June 18-21! The AMC convenes thousands of people doing transformative work at the intersections of media and communications, art, technology, and social justice.
We are excited to be a part of the workshops, dialogues, and emergent festivities of the 2015 AMC. Misty and I are looking forward to collaborating with Beatrice Martini, Jack from Palante Tech, and many others.
We are planning to host three sessions:
After an informative Listening Tour with nonprofits in Los Angeles, we are southbound on Highway 5 for our spring Training Roadshow! The first week of May, we will be joining nonprofits and grassroots organizers in LA for participatory workshops and technology skill shares.
We have a few community-driven events on our calendar:
Documenting human rights violations depends on data. Photos of survivors. Recorded first hand accounts of atrocities. Emails and financial documents from the perpetrators. These materials are all data-driven, and this documentation is essential to the protection of human rights. But if this data is not handled carefully, it can compromise the safety of the people who create, collect, or use it.
The Responsible Data Forum, held in Manila on March 21 and 22, 2015, brought together human rights defenders, technologists, and trainers from around the world to foster responsible data practices for human rights documentation. This was the eighth Responsible Data Forum held by the engine room, an organization that supports and investigates the use of technology and data in advocacy work.
In Manila, I joined small working groups to explore topics such as how to identify appropriate tools and best practices for verifying human rights documentation. I worked with an incredible group of people to explore the challenges of working in low technology environments. We designed our conversation to help funders and developers think through the question of, "Will it be productive to bring technology to a low tech situation?"
