This summer the Africa-India Technology Institute (AITI) in Accra, Ghana will host Maker Faire Africa, a two-day showcase of African ingenuity and entrepreneurship. Modeled on the popular Maker Faire format developed in the U.S. by Make Magazine and O’Reilly media, the festival will include exhibitions of functional devices invented locally, artwork derived from found objects and materials, workshops and demonstrations such as cellphone hacking, and panel discussions across a range of topics, including financing invention and the challenges of moving from invention to production.More information and a program available at http://www.makerfaireafrica.com 

Two founder-centered arts organizations, which each address the impact of violence on youth in different ways, are profiled in this month’s issue of ODE Magazine. One, founded in Los Angeles on principles of forgiveness and victim reconciliation, works with youth already deeply involved in the cycle of gang violence. The other, founded and operating in Cape Town, centering its activities on the needs of women and children who are victims of  abuse, violence and exploitation. The Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF), born out of the grief and generosity of a father who lost a son to a senseless act of violence. That was 12 years ago. Today, the foundation reaches millions of students in California with a message of hope, forgiveness and personal responsibility through programs that teach peace. Through community service projects, the TKF Foundation encourages children and youth to strengthen their ties to community.In South Africa, Angela Rackstraw founded Community Art Therapy after seeing children directly affected by gun violence playing among the dead victims. Her work, carried out in a shipping container structure at St Mary’s Catholic Church in Nyanga, a township skirting Cape Town, aims to bring healing to as many women as she can on the monthly income she scrapes together from individuals and foundations.I can imagine Peace Tiles being a resource for groups like these, offered as a tool to reach shared awareness-raising, therapy,  self-advocacy and research goals.

Summary: I am raising travel funds for Kenyan community-based arts and theater educator Dennis Kimambo to join me in Vermont, USA during October.

This Fall Peace Tiles founder Lars Hasselblad Torres and Kenyan educator Dennis Kimambo are planning a get-together in Cabot, Vermont. The purpose of this meeting is to share how each of us uses the workshop format, discuss ways the Peace Tiles process has been used at the community level to promote social inclusion and education, and awareness-raising at the global level. At the same time, we are planning to strategize ways to strengthen the growing Peace Tiles network in Kenya.

Dennis Kimambo is a truly outstanding peer educator from Kenya who, among many other exciting things, is finding ways to use the Peace Tiles process in prison settings to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS prevention. Dennis also has a long track-record of building unique partnerships with local and international organizations to realize his education programs, including MTV and Family Health International. Our meeting in Cabot represents an opportunity to strengthen our relationship and define ways to deepen our collaboration.

I would very much like Dennis to come to Vermont at this beautiful time of year. To make this happen, we need to jointly raise about $2,300 to cover visa (Update: Dennis has secured a visa, which cost $350 and has already been covered!) and airfare as well as a modest travel stipend. I hope you will join me in helping to raise the funds necessary to bring this dynamic educator to the US for ten days in October . I am convinced that Dennis’ visit will be a wonderful learning and networking opportunity, as well as help to strengthen a Peace Tiles link the to grassroots in Kenya.

To learn more about Dennis, please visit the Omidyar Network online community. To make a donation, click on the badge below

Deepest thanks,

lars

One of the areas Peace Tiles will be developing curriculum and initiatives around in 2007 is Children and Waste.  I am beginning to pull together some resources, facts and figures.  I’d love your support and involvement!  Please help me understand this issue better from various perspectives and fields.

Sometime in 2007, according to U.N. estimates, more than 50 percent of the population of the planet will live in cities for the first time.  200 years ago, the urbanized population was around 3 percent.  Each week, approximately 1.3 million people leave small towns and the countryside for a life in the city. A billion of these people, most of them children, will end up in the world’s fast-growing slums. Many of them will grow up earning a living on dumps.

In 1995 I spent 3 weeks in and around Dakar’s municipal dump, a landfill occupying what used to be a 2.5km sq. lake at Mbeubeuss.  The experience opened my eyes to several important findings.

First, depending on your perspective, the dump is either your entry or your exit into the urban economy if you are poor.  In Senegal, many youths — particularly those from the rural Baol region in the south — come to Dakar looking for work.  Finding none, and not wishing to return to the arid farms of their childhood, they occupy a niche at the dump.

A second discovery is that dump workers — often considered part of the informal economy in many countries — are almost always part of a network.  The entire life at the Mbeubeuss dump is organized into stratified networks around specific activities, principally ragpicking of various items (ie glass jars, cloth scraps, and metal parts), the cleaning and preparation of items for repair and reuse, craft workers, and those who sell items at market.

Third, there is a stunning variety of activity and livelihoods being made at the dump, producing significant value for the urban poor.  Items sold at market that are produced from materials reclaimed at the dump will sell for 1/5 of the price of “new” items in a market.  This makes everything from footwear to paint to luggage much more accessible to those who need them.

More soon… I’ll also be blogging about this topic at CraftCycle.net with my friend Darlene Charneco…