Connecting /
My second video for videoblogging week 2008 is a short introduction to Joy, one of the presenters at Canal Africa (site will be revamped soon), which is a local tv station in Copenhagen. I will help Canal Africa to put some of their content online as well as use the more interactive elements of videoblogging/new media in their daily work.
I met Rene Noukeu a few weeks ago through a common friend of ours, and we immediately clicked. We have the same point of view of the image that is attached to Africa (as well as most other regions in the world) by western media.
Why oh why do we need to be bombarded with just the sad news from Africa? Why do many of us keep having the impression that we need to go down there and help them, instead of us seeing us and them as equal partners that can learn from each other and enrich each other’s lives?
One of the phrases that Rene has repeated to me is: “We want Africa to be part of the world, not outside the world”. The whole concept of “the third world” is, however much I can understand its usage in situations, horrendous. We have a bunch of countries, and we label them all “third world” or “developing countries”. Oh, it’s very convenient.
I have never been to Africa myself, and I have in fact never been to a “third world country”, so I may just be blowing out of my butt here, but this is something that I really feel emotional about.
When I first learned about videoblogging, it was this kind of cross-cultural communication that I thought of. I remember being at VloggerCon in NYC in January 2005 and in this session I kept thinking about what I wanted, in the long run, from all of this. In the end, what I said was kind of vague, but the geist was there. Real communication between people in a global context. Since then, I spent more time thinking about all of these issues rather than actively working on the concepts and making them work.
Meeting Rene and his team helped all those old issues come to the forefront again for me, and it is a very inspiring experience. I look forward to working with Canal Africa in developing tools and workflows that work for them, and I will document our process here on DLTQ.
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Millenium Women, women of color, here’s Philadelphia looking at you kid!
This is very cool Raymond, and, actually relates to much of the world. Around here (in the middle of the U.S.) to be a woman and/or to be a person of color (other than my color), is challenging; and to be both is tougher.
Sweet, spread the love and the knowledge. Vlog on!!