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This Sunday marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the second of a two-part series, Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi explores life on the

Educate! started in Uganda because it has the youngest population in the world - over 50 percent under the age of 15 – and the highest youth unemployment rate of 83 percent (World Bank, African Development Indicators). There are critical challenges facing youth, yet the current education system in Uganda – as in much of the world – leaves the next generation unprepared to create and lead solutions. Therefore, we work within schools to transform the purpose of education.

Educate! develops young leaders and entrepreneurs in Uganda by providing long-term mentorship and two-years of world-class leadership and entrepreneurship training to help high school students start enterprises that solve poverty, disease, violence and environmental degradation. Educate!’s alumni program provides ongoing mentorship, training, and access to capital to amplify the impact our students have after graduation. Our model is exponential empowerment – a long term investment in youth so they can go on to positively impact many others throughout their lives. We work with 3,600 diverse young leaders and entrepreneurs across Uganda – the next Nelson Mandela, Wangari Maathai and Mahatma Gandhi of Africa.

K'NAAN: The pressures of the music industry encouraged me to change the truth and soul of my songs.

damariscotta

“A group of South African students and an aid agency in Norway are challenging the stereotypical image of Africa as a continent riddled with conflict, disease, corruption, poverty, and brutal dictatorships needing rescue from developed nations.” — tune into the NPR story, here.

As a great teaching tool - pair it with this video, "Do they know it's Christmas Time?", a video created by British celebrities in the 80s for BandAid, which the students chose to parody.

Great Article in the NYTimes: The Black Man's Burden

On September 24, NPR show Radiolab aired a 25-minute segment on Yellow Rain. In the 1960s, most Hmong had sided with America in a secret war against the Pathet Lao and its allies. More than 100,000 Hmong died in this conflict, and when American troops pulled out, the rest were left to face brutal repercussions. Those who survived the perilous journey to Thailand carried horrific stories of an ongoing genocide, among them accounts of chemical warfare. Their stories provoked a scientific controversy that still hasn't been resolved. In its podcast, Radiolab set out to find the "fact of the matter." Yet its relentless badgering of Hmong refugee Eng Yang and his niece, award-winning author and activist Kao Kalia Yang, provoked an outcry among its listeners, and its ongoing callous, racist handling of the issue has since been criticized in several places, including Hyphen. When Hyphen's R.J. Lozada reached out to Kao Kalia Yang, she graciously agreed to share her side of the story for the first time. What follows are her words, and those of her uncle.

"Service programs that do not make a material difference in the lives of the people they hope to serve are not service programs — they are photo-ops designed to meet the narrative and photographic needs of American Jews."

see Granta article,

Hipstamatic Revolution

Avoiding the simplistic narratives of Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism, photographers use photo-apps to represent everyday Africa.

Following three years of research in an Indian slum, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist discusses what language can’t express, her view that nobody is representative, and the ethical dilemmas of writing about the poor.

SALON: Neuroscience shows the media's overwhelming whiteness really is changing our minds. But we can change them back

Great talk by Jad Abumrad on music in storytelling

"In 1967 Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor visited the mountains of Central Appalachia to document poverty. A local landlord, who resented the presence of filmmakers on his property, shot and killed O'Connor, in part because of his anger over the media images of Appalachia that had become icons in the nation's War on Poverty.

Filmmaker Elizabeth Barret, a native of Appalachia, uses O'Connor's death as a lens to explore the complex relationship between those who make films to promote social change and the people whose lives are represented in such media productions. Through first-person accounts of the killing and the perspective of three decades of reflection, Stranger with a Camera leads viewers on a quest for understanding - a quest that ultimately leads Barret to examine her own role as both a maker of media and a member of the Appalachian community she portrays."

Proof is dedicated to the power of visual artists to bear witness, and create images that can make the anonymous waves of human rights tragedies into personal and immediate calls to action. PROOF has brought together photographers, documentarians, academics and journalists from different media sources in an alliance to reach out and educate with images that inspire and motivate change. We produce exhibitions, publications, theatre and on site activities in nations with some of the world’s most difficult recent histories.

Great Resources, link here to their statement of ethical practice

Pine Ridge Community Storytelling Project

A National Geographic project in partnership with Cowbird

This collection tells the story of life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, told by the people of Pine Ridge in their own unedited words. Click here to explore their stories.

This letter from Red Cloud Sophomore Charlie Cuny was particularly moving, and helped me to see that families like hers are rarely (if ever) included in articles, because their story lacks the sensationalism that drives most coverage of Reservation life.

About the Project

by Aaron Huey

It all started when an envelope full of letters arrived in my mailbox. They came from high school students at the Red Cloud Indian School after they had seen a photo story of mine on Pine Ridge in 2009. Their letters challenged me to see a different side of the Reservation.

As a photojournalist who has been working on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the past 7 years, I’ve always struggled with how to share the incredibly complex story of this community. I’ve never been able to tell all the stories that I want to tell on Pine Ridge, and I’ve come to realize that even if I could, I can’t tell them the way the people want them told.

To solve this dilemma, I joined forces with web pioneer Jonathan Harris, the creator of cowbird.com—a visionary, embeddable, storytelling platform. Together we built this community storytelling project so that the people of Pine Ridge could author their own story. This new relationship between the story subject and the publication opens up a new kind of transparency and dialog rarely seen in mainstream journalism today.

Explore Their Stories

The Moment

See Huey’s attempts to involve more people in the cover story.

Feature Article

Read the feature article from National Geographic.

Reservation Map

See how broken treaties have reduced reservation lands.

Voices of Pine Ridge

Listen to audio interviews recorded by Aaron Huey.

This is a work in progress and a first in the journalism world. Check back in the coming months to see how it grows! If you are Oglala Lakota and would like to contribute a story, please email [email protected] for instructions.

Also, mentioned in the article, another incredible periodical about social justice in schools: Rethinking Schools

Teachers and parents often want to act on the issue of racism, but don’t know how. This one-of-a-kind volume is the blueprint; no one should teach another day without reading it. —TIM WISE, AUTHOR OF WHITE LIKE ME

Everyday Antiracism

Getting Real About Race in School

EDITED BY MICA POLLOCK

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