“Sisi ni Amani” means “We Are Peace” in Swahili. Our innovation was to use mapping to support existing peace leaders by connecting them, instead of bringing in new peace programs. Our hope was to give community members the information to connect with peace activities near them. We joined Digital Democracy and launched in Kenya. Now, having left Digital Democracy to pursue a more permanent local structure and a new program of activities, we want to share with Digidem’s supporters what we have accomplished and learned over the past seven months in Kenya.

Photo by Youth Participant from Project Einstein Kenya Curriculum

We arrived in Kenya last July along with then-Media Manager Tegan Bukowski and started our peace photography workshops to understand local definitions of peace, modeled on the Project Einstein curriculum. The Kibera photo project workshop produced some incredible work by our young participants. Tegan Bukowski, who led the workshops, has done incredible work in the past months to create a book of the childrens’ photography and to organize an exhibition of their work. Looking forward, we are excited to see the work of these youth gain its well-deserved audience!

In early September, the Sisi ni Amani team decided that, based on what it had learned, it would need to take a community-by-community approach to outreach for mapping peace projects. We began in Baba Dogo, a slum in Eastlands, Nairobi, which experienced widespread violence in 2007 and 2008 around and after elections. Our main contact in Baba Dogo arranged for a group of community groups to meet and plan an outreach strategy, leading to our community launch event. Based on the ideas of, and with full participation from, ten community groups, our launch consisted of a peace procession, with over 100 individuals marching wearing Sisi ni Amani t-shirts, plus drummers, singers, and dancers. The procession stopped in each of Baba Dogo’s nine cells to let people know about our phone number, and flyers and stickers were distributed throughout the procession.

The day culminated with a peace concert for which performers donated their time and talent, and which was attended by upwards of 400 community members. The day was a bright and colorful success in terms of getting the community to mobilize around the theme of peace.

Sisi Ni Amani Peace Mapping Training Participants

After the launch, we worked with the local groups to designate a temporary leadership structure, which then planned a team-building picnic for members of peace groups from both Baba Dogo and the neighboring Korogocho slum. The picnic included team-building exercises and discussion about how to mobilize the represented youth groups towards accomplishing the mission of Sisi ni Amani. The team then decided to make a launch in Korogocho, and this launch took place at the end of November. Again, the launch included participation of ten community groups from Korogocho, and consisted of a peace procession as well as a concert.

Major lessons learned from these two community launches include the importance of managing expectations of participants in programs. Despite us making the fact of our (very) limited resources clear to the group, the sheer fact that we were funding a major launch and came from the U.S. created very high expectations of future funding and personal benefit from many individuals who participated in the launches but were not more deeply involved. We learned the importance of not only being clear with words, but also making clear with actions (such as giving the group a budget to come up with an event instead of inviting them to share their ideas and then figuring out what our budget could accommodate) would be important for planning such community events in the future.

Asking people to send mobile SMS about peace events or groups was often confusing to the community, and the fact that there was no clear or immediate benefit or even effect on the individuals texting in prevented them from participating. In addition, the lack of internet access as well as the fact that most groups in the community do know who and where each other are, but are nonetheless not working together, made the map useful for reporters and less useful for the community in terms of increasing coordination and collaboration between groups, or increasing community awareness of existing peace programs. This does not mean that peace mapping cannot be useful – only that a different approach may be needed, and that it may be more useful for the media and for creating peace heroes and coverage of peace in the country than for the groups themselves.

Uchaguzi: Mapping the Constitutional Referendum

Ahead of Kenya’s vote on a constitutional referendum on August 4, 2010, we worked with the Ushahidi team on Uchaguzi, an effort to map information during the event. For us it was an opportunity to help map to encourage peace and prevent violence. This was the second attempt to give Kenya a new constitution. The first was in 2005, and the motion was defeated. It has been noted that the failure to adopt a constitution was one of the causes of the post election violence in 2008 that killed thousands, displaced 300,000 and affected all Kenyans. Cody and I taught volunteers how to use the system while Tegan and other Ushahidi techies did some troubleshooting.

After almost seven months of activity on the ground, we are pursuing a new avenue to support peace work in Kenya. In mid-January, the team officially left Digital Democracy and has incorporated as a new organization in Kenya, dedicated to supporting existing peace work in Kenya through the use of open-source technologies. While continuing to bring on Kenyan volunteers and staff, we are presently focusing on SMS communications, and giving community peace leaders the ability to rapidly and effectively communicate with one another and their communities via SMS. We believe that our approach has huge potential to support and enhance peace work in our target communities in Kenya, and to create a long-term presence in Kenya.

We will be taking new and innovative approaches to our work in upcoming years leading up to the 2012 presidential elections, and the lessons we learned in our attempts at creating a mapping-based project will certainly serve us well. We invite you to follow us at Sisi ni Amani Kenya at sisiniamani.org. As we move forward with Sisi ni Amani Kenya, we wish to express our sincere gratitude for the team at Digital Democracy for their support of us and of our work over the past months. We learned a great deal under their guidance and are grateful for the support and insight they brought to our venture at its outset.

Stay tuned for my chapter on peacemapping in the the forthcoming book, for which Dd’s Emily Jacobi has also written a chapeter: Mobile Technologies for Conflict Management: New Avenues for Online Dispute Resolution, ed. Marta Poble.

Sisi Ni Amani Team with Project Einstein Kenya Youth

This past Saturday we were honored to be a part of “Life in a Day“, a project to create the first user-generated documentary. Presented by Google, Producer Ridley Scott, and Director Kevin McDonald, this project asked people around the world to film their lives on one day, Saturday July 24, 2010. What kind of stories were they looking for? Stories of the everyday, answering questions such as, what makes you happy? What’s in your pocket? What do you fear?

Project partner Against All Odds Productions contacted us to help connect them  to communities that do not have access to the technologies necessary to film their lives. We sent video cameras to staff members, Emma Hulse in Guatemala, Rachel Brown, Cody Valdes and Tegan Bukowski in Nairobi, Gabe Hopkins in Thailand and partner Ketie Danelia in Georgia, enabling them to film the communities they’re living in and working with. In addition, Co-Director Emily Jacobi took video cameras with her to Port Au Prince Haiti, to film with women leaders working there. Importantly these communities are able to keep these cameras that were sent, and continue to film their lives.

Please see some of the pictures from their shoots:

Life in a Day: Georgia

Life in a Day: Kenya

Since arriving in Nairobi this week, Rachel and Cody, along with Media Manager Tegan Bukowski, have spent time with the local tech community at iHub Nairobi and met with groups in preparation for the first element of the project: leading digital photography workshops with youth in Kibera later this month. This series of workshops, centered around themes of peace, is based on Digital Democracy’s Project Einstein photography training curriculum, and will allow Kenyan youth to document what they believe represents, promotes, and maintains peace in their communities, and will then share their photographs with their peers and with their communities through public exhibitions. Check out the amazing work they’re up to! Visit their website for frequent updates, photos and more.

Tune in live for the webcast on May 12, 2010 from 9:30am to 3:30pm (Eastern) entitled “Seizing the Moment: Media & Peacebuilding.” This summit will consider specific recommendations on ways to harness the power of media for conflict prevention. It will bring together senior media makers and policymakers including Jared Cohen, Riz Khan, and Rebecca MacKinnon. The online audience will be able to engage panelists through a live chat and Twitter discussion (hashtag: #magd). We encourage you to take part!

For me, the power of media runs deep. Some years ago I ran a film festival in Tblisi, Georgia as a peacebuilding initiative for people from Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as those from separatist regions of Georgia. Filmmakers saw countries that they were otherwise barred from and began speaking with people from those countries for the first time. As time went on, friendships grew and negative stereotypes fade away.

The work that we do with Digital Democracy TV very much comes from the same ethic. We try to highlight the incredible stories told by the brave people we work with around the world, who are often challenging norms or otherwise defending the rights and integrity of human beings. Bridging these gaps, allowing people to relate to one another, allows for a new kind of diplomacy and helps to inform our own communities that much more

It’s crucial for youth to develop these skills. They’re becoming increasingly able to create media, but in order for it to be beneficial, they need to really understand it. We’ve been building a participatory learning curriculum for new media literacy. We just got some support to connect youth with resettled Karen refugees in Indiana using the Project Roebling platform we’re building with MIT and Eyebeam in Drupal. There’s also work from an orphanage in South Africa and the first batch of youth in Bangladesh. Project Einstein Thailand – a photo training with youth in the Mae La Refugee Camp. You can view photos and videos we filmed and broadcast live on the web.

This kind of an education project can lay the foundations for future crisis response by having the maps and photographs created by youth as part of their education. We realized this, unfortunately, when we had a team on the ground in Haiti doing a media training with youth and the earthquake hit. Thankfully we were able to utilize http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ to respond in the immediate term. Now we’re looking to build on the system even further for violence prevention and peace. Two of my colleagues evolved this into a media training in Haiti as we develop a system for technology on prevention of women and gender-based violence.

We’ll be exploring this in even more detail with Sisi Ni Amani (We Are Peace), our peacemapping program in Kenya. Starting this summer, we’ll be raising awareness of peace efforts within Kenya by mapping peace initiatives across all segments of Kenyan society. Sisi ni Amani seeks to connect previously disconnected agents to empower this arm of civil society before Kenya’s 2012 presidential election.

This is the question posed by Digital Democracy’s newest program, Sisi ni Amani, which means “We are Peace” in Swahili. Sisi ni Amani is a new project based on a powerful idea – that violence can be prevented by mapping and promoting peace initiatives. We have two dedicated staff members who will be launching the project this summer, mapping peace in Kenya leading up to and through the 2012 elections.

Digital Democracy’s programs have already made broad use the idea of crisis mapping, from mapping human rights abuses in Burma to election monitoring to mapping disasters such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. We’re thrilled now to be pioneering the ideas of peace mapping as a way to strengthen peace initiatives. Starting this summer, Sisi ni Amani will work to map, highlight, and network peace initiatives in Kenya, partnering with Ushahidi and local media groups in Kenya to promote the work of the peace initiatives.

But it’s not just the idea of peace mapping that we’re inspired by. We’re also inspired by the dynamic duo working on the project, Rachel Brown & Cody Valdes. Rachel is Sisi ni Amani’s Project Director. Last spring, she was living in Nairobi, and noticed the work of graffiti artist Solo 7 who was painting messages of peace all over the city.

graffiti artist Solo 7

Inspired by him and other courageous peace leaders she met during her semester of study, she came up with the idea ofSisi ni Amani to support these brave individuals by highlighting their work and networking them. A graduating senior at Tufts University, Rachel speaks Swahili and has done previous work in Guatelmala, worked with tenant organizers in Massachusetts and high school students in India.

Sisi ni Amani’s Project Manager is Cody Valdes, a fellow Tufts student from Vancouver, Canada. He and Rachel work together closely on the project, and he brings experience leading a group project in Rwanda, conducting research on corruption in the Philippines, and the impact of the Olympic Games on impoverished urban communities in Vancouver. At Tufts, Cody co-edits Discourse and co-leads the Poverty and Power Research Initiative. He is one of the founding members of Solar for Gaza/Sderot, a Climate for Peace initiative advocating for renewable energy-based development for conflict resolution.

Want to support Sisi ni Amani? Follow them on Twitter and on their blog, and donate to their project! Click the “Support Us” box on our Get Involved page, and be sure to designate your donation to “Sisi ni Amani”.