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Turkey - Digitally-Empowered Activists
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

ferri ride (Europe -> Asia) I was delighted to take part in an event hosted in Istanbul, Turkey on "Digitally-Empowered Activists: Getting the Tools to the People Who Need Them". The event was sponsored by Harvard's Berkman Center's Internet and Democracy Project. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/idistanbul There were a series of interesting case studies showcased during our discussion that are worth highlighting:

Video Advocacy and Mash-ups: Tracking Tunisia's World-Hopping President with Digital Video and Google Maps
• Video demonstration: cannot ‘clean up’ dictatorship theme, remix use of animals, remix use of symbols, mashups (google maps/google earth) about the democratic gap vs. Digital gap, Tunisian prison map (map cracking down on freedom of expression - http://kitab.nl/tunisianprisonersmap/), relative of prisoners
• Tools can be used in a way to promote democracy & human rights
• How to deal with the issue that the more impact you have, the greater censorship
• Debate of Propaganda vs. Detailed analysis
• Issue of making exaggerating claims (Save Darfur campaign in UK was sued by Sudan and won)

Mobile Phone Advocacy: SMS on the Frontline in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan
• Downloadable software, can send/receive messages on mobile phones, contact manager, groups, run surveys, set keywords
• Messages received can be exported in excel (i.e. reporting of human rights abuses)
• http://frontlinesms.kiwanja.net/ - the software is free for charities (I need an activation code) but cell phone service providers would still need to be paid for messages sent

Social Network Advocacy: Burma Facebook Campaign - 421,569 Members Support the Monks
• Started very ad-hoc from a person in Burma
• Became a bulletin board for everything going on, photos not covered in mainstream media
• Class admin as spammers (too many emails, wall posts etc) – problem, reason for creating a separate website, if over 10,000 ppl in a group you can’t message them
• Short-term, ad-hoc, media-centric
• Unless there is a strong emotional/visual impact (striking image), people may not be interested
• Doesn’t help build a longer-term activist base
• A lot of people are ‘serial activists’ – jumping from one cause to the next
• You might think you have a lot of potential but it can be misleading

Blog-Based Advocacy: Responding to the Post-Election Crisis in Kenya
• http://www.kenyaunlimited.com/ – Kenyans are going online to get information about what is happening in Kenya (600+ bloggers in the blog ring)
• ban on traditional media, compromises due to political sympathies, bloggers filled the gap
• the day the results were announced – SMS saying opposition leaders either shot/arrested
• http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/about/#RegionalEditors
• Ushahidi Calendar (incidents of violence in Kenya) - http://www.ushahidi.com/
• Mashada.com, ihavenotribe.com (many initiatives springing up to denounce tribalism)
• Challenges of data gathering, fear of contradicting gov stats, verification, ‘why’ question?
• Bloggers catch attention of international media, quoting bloggers in BBC gets back to Kenya
• It is important to provide a space for people to react in a constructive way

Training in Technology
• Tactical Tech - www.tacticaltech.org
• Demystifying technology for advocates
• Training groups i.e. sex worker health and rights advocates
• Info-Activist Camp and Handbook
• NGO in a Box – Security Toolkit (may help us address censorship issue)
o http://security.ngoinabox.org/html/en/index.html
• People like print & face to face, pooling expertise and knowledge (skillshare), distributing tools offiline is important, huge appetite for translations, accessing communities hard to train face-to-face (video/audi), people like non-tech version
• Learning can be fun, people keep learning from and helping each other
• Bringing technies and advocates together works
• The less ‘geeky’ the trainer & materials, the more popular it is

Resources:

• http://digiactive.org/ website about tools/application for activism
• The Berkman Centre has many other case studies on the use of technology for activism
o http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/idblog/
o The Citizen Journalism Web Site 'OhmyNews' and the 2002 South Korean Presidential Election
o http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1077920
o The Role of Digital Networked Technologies in the Ukrainian Orange Revolution
o http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1077686


I was able to arrange for important meeting while in Turkey.

I met with Ali Ercan Ozgur who is a TIG member I met in 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development and again in Egypt at the 2002 Youth Employment Summit. In 2005 we met in New York at the World Programme of Action for Youth +10 meeting. Ali is one of the founders of the National Youth Parliament in Turkey and is one of the 17 people that I interviewed as part of my Masters Research on Youth-Led Action in an International Context. Having never been to Turkey before, I was really excited to meet with Ali and be welcomed by him to this lovely city (Istanbul). We enjoyed dinner together and talked about our various experiences in working for youth-led development over so many years. We also talked about the challenges that come with 'growing out of youth' - including the overwhelming sense of responsibilities that we start to experience. Ali helped to arrange some meetings for me in Turkey (which I am very grateful for).

meeting with e-genclik (WYC 2010) Met with the host organization for the World Youth Congress 2010 in Istanbul (e-genclik.net) Rengin Çehreli, Director of Domestic Affairs, e-genclik.net along with Nihal and Ahmet
- learned about history of e-genclik (the organization started about one year ago, founders were participants in the World Youth Congress that took place in Hawaii. It was amazing for me to see how the congress has really inspired youth to work towards strengthening youth-led development)
- we talked about the plans for WYC 2010 fundraising (they have support from the Ministry of Education)
- they expressed interest in having TIG as a partner of the congress
- talked about the Turkish website (ideas on how to improve the site), it was amazing for me to realize that there are people using our non-english versions of TIG and how important it is to ensure ongoing recruitment/training of teams

meeting with Youth for Habitat (Basak and Seda) + Ali
Met with Youth for Habitat (Basak Saral and Seda Atabay)
- Ali used to work for Youth for Habitat so it was helpful to have him arrange the meeting with Basak Saral who is the Secretary General and Seda Atabay (Bridging Digital Divide Project Coordinator)
- learned about their programs in Turkey (they partner with many companies including Microsoft, CISCO, vodaphone etc) and have launched many ICT training programs as well as online community platforms (such as www.mytecc.com)
- I talked about the TIG website and our desire to work with leading NGOs in countries to strengthen our country websites as well as language websites

meeting with Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey
Met with Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey (TEGV)
- This is one of the largest NGOs in Turkey that is very well supported
- they have 10,000 volunteers who support children's non-formal education
- Ali works for TEGV in their Resource Development Department and introduced me to many people in the organization from the Education department, IT and Communications Department along with his boss in the Resource Development Department (Ozgur Unluhisarcikli)
- Ozgur was familiar with TIG (via Ali) and was most impressed with our Educational Games section. They were delighted to see that our MDG game is in Turkish and would love to promote our games to children & youth via their programs (as well as localize further)

February 4, 2008 | 11:22 AM Comments  0 comments
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