Digital Democracy

Indianapolis, IN: Wednesday, August 10th, the students of Project Einstein Indianapolis will have an audience of hundreds as visitors to the Indianapolis City Market’s weekly farmer’s market will be able to view the work of young photographers, who are primarily refugees from Burma/Myanmar. Tomorrow’s exhibit is the result of a year-long photo training with students [...]

You were born in KweKalu, a place near Mae Sot, Thailand. You live there one year when the Burmese government attacks the poor camp. Your fifty year old grandma carries you to escape, with bombs and fire all around. Thank God, your life is not taken away. When the attack is clear, many people in [...]

26.3 miles. That’s the distance I’ve been driving every day this past week to work with two communities of refugee youth living on opposite sides of town in Indianapolis, Indiana. Many of their experiences – moving to a new country, resettling in the US, adapting to life at an Indianapolis high school – are quite [...]

Allegedly a country with less than 1% Internet & mobile penetration, Digital Democracy traveled to Burma/Myanmar in August 2009 to conduct research on ICT in the country to uncover the realities of how people are communicating. The trip offered a unique opportunity to look at how people and companies are developing unique mobile & internet [...]

From late April through the end of July, I was working and living in Western Thailand. This work enabled me to visit Mae La refugee camp quite often, during which I was able to take advantage of the time to pay several visits to the Leadership and Management Training Center (LMTC), a school inside Mae [...]

In this episode of DdTv venture back with us to January 2008 to see the origins of Project Einstein. Mark and Emily spend several days working with youth in Kutupalong refugee camp in Southern Bangladesh, home to thousands of Rohingya refugees from Burma. Stateless, the Rohingya, a muslim ethnic group from Western Burma have fled [...]

On the border of Thailand and Burma/Myanmar, I met Aung Zaw, who told me about risking his life  to document human rights abuses performed by the government of Myanmar. His hope was that this information could help to defend his people. At the end of our talk, he asked if we could become Facebook friends. [...]

We just wrote about the power of the volunteers who have worked on Haiti. However volunteers are not only useful in times of crises. Digital Democracy’s core team is small, and we accomplish our work through partnerships and collaborations. Our volunteers and interns play a crucial role, and today we want to highlight the work [...]

Mark and Emily travel to Mae La refugee camp in Northern Thailand to launch our digital penpal program Project Einstein with Burmese youth. Students from the Leadership Management Training College, never having held a camera before, are taught the fundamentals of digital photography, including composition and editing, and choose themes from their lives to document [...]

Ever since Digital Democracy began working with Burmese populations we have believed that it is essential to have a completely comprehensive understanding of the country and the challenges it faces. This means going beyond the well-understood populations living on the border with Thailand to understand conditions on the ground inside Burma and along all of [...]