On April 28th, 2011, Digital Democracy and ELK Studios launchedJan Nou We L/The Way We See It: A Collection of Haitian Women’s Photographyat SplashLight Studios in New York. The Collection of 47 original photographs is the culmination of a year of programming with Haitian women and a partnership with Erin Kornfeld and Erica Leone of ELK Studios, an NYC-based art collective, who curated the exhibition and designed the collection catalogue. The result is a permanent collection of photographs taken by Haitian women to raise awareness about their lives in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake and raise support for their work. Read more…
It’s getting warmer in NYC and the office is bustling with activity. We’re happy to have brought on a hacker to help us with our technical projects, as well as two Spring interns. We’re having exciting times here at Digital Democracy. Let us know if there’s anyone that you know who can help us make a difference and in the meantime, check out their bios to learn more: Read more…
On Saturday, March 12th, technologists, humanitarians, and community organizers gathered at the second ever #BarCampHaiti, convened in Port Au Prince. For those not familiar with “BarCamps,” they are a conference style long popular among technologists - and increasingly other communities - with an agenda partially determined at the event itself based on the skills of those participating and what they want to learn. This BarCamp brought together members of the various communities in Haiti working with technology to share ideas and projects, and to encourage learning and collaboration. It was organized by Chrissy Martin who is now working for Digicel, but was part of the Digital Democracy team on the ground in Haiti when the earthquake hit. She produced this report about our initial work in Haiti and is featured in this episode of DDTV about the earthquake and what it was like to be on the ground during it. Read more…
Combine thoughtful and moving documentaries from around the world and a beautiful city, rich with history and culture and you have the One World Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Prague - the largest human rights film festival in the world, which I attended two weeks ago. Dd was invited to the festival, both as finalists in a new competitive category as well as presenters during a 6-day workshop taking place at Prague’s co-working, innovation space, the Hub Prague. It was exciting to have Dd be featured in the New Media for Social Change program, a new segment of the festival that focused on how people can use new media, technology and video for work in the areas of transparency, Democracy and human rights. Read more…
In 2008, we formed Digital Democracy based on a simple but powerful idea: Technology should be used to empower even the most marginalized groups to engage in democratic action, whether locally, on a national or international scale. Read more…
Tuesday marked the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, and Digital Democracy was celebrating from Port-au-Prince, where our Haiti Program Manager Emilie Reiser joined one of our local partners, KOFAVIV, for a day-long celebration. The situation for women in Haiti remains challenging, particularly in the displaced person camps where attacks of rape and sexual violence continue against women and girls of all ages. Despite this, we have much to celebrate. Read more…
13 Kids + 4 Cameras = Project Einstein South Africa Read more…
In early 2010, Cody Valdes and I approached Digital Democracy with a project proposal: to work with grassroots groups in Kenya to map peace projects happening all around the country. Read more…
Working on a photography project with kids in Bangladesh, as their work drew to a close, the Anyat Ullah chose a name for the project “Project Einstein.” All the kids quickly agreed, explaining: Read more…