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 your village go back, and they can’t find their houses. Instead they find ashes and death.

What is it like to grow up in a civil war? To flee your homeland with your family? To live in a refugee camp? To trade all of the above for a new life in a new country – with the potential for freedom, but only if everything you know is left behind?

These are questions we sought to answer with a recent exhibition of photography by Burmese refugee students in Indianapolis, Indiana. The photographs, taken over the past year as part of Project Einstein Indianapolis, a program focused on telling the stories of refugee youth through photography and digital media.

When I was growing up in Indianapolis, I had never heard of the Southeast Asian nation of Burma/Myanmar. Although there was a small but growing population of Burmese people in nearby Fort Wayne Indiana at the time, I knew nothing about the country, where a military dictatorship has ruled since 1962. If I had, perhaps I would have learned how different my life was from the lives of Burmese people my age. Whereas I grew up in  relative peace, with access to public schools and health services, many of Burma’s 60 million people grow up without either, and in many parts of the country there continues to be active warfare by the Burmese military against ethnic minority groups. More than 3 million people have been displaced by war, political oppression and economic hardship into the neighboring countries of India, Thailand, Bangladesh and Malaysia, where they live trapped in refugee camps or illegally as migrant workers.

I didn’t learn about Burma until I went to college, studying at American University which has long supported the democracy movement in Burma. And it wasn’t till I traveled to the Thai-Burma border in 2003 and met Burmese refugees there that I learned about the growing ties between my hometown and people from Burma. By 2007, when Mark and I were learning from Burmese refugees in Thailand as part of a team from the Center for Peace Building International – research that inspired us to found Digital Democracy – there was a growing population of Burmese refugees who had been resettled in Indianapolis. Now, there are more than 5,000, representing primarily the Karen & Chin ethnic groups from Eastern & Western Burma, respectively.

Because of my own personal journey of learning about Burma, it has been humbling to work with the Project Einstein students at Southport & North Central High schools as they have told their own stories through words and text. This past month, both have had the opportunity to showcase some photography and highlight their other talents at events at both schools. At Southport High School, Chin students and other English language learners performed in a concert on April 26, and a few of their framed images were on display in the atrium of the theater. On May 3rd, Karen students at North Central high school debuted their photos to fellow North Central students and the community at large, with a reception that was previewed by the Indianapolis Star.

The reception was an evening of celebration and pride for the Project Einstein North Central students, which included students born in the US and Latin America as well 14 Karen refugees from Eastern Burma and one student from Iraq. They dressed in traditional clothing as they welcomed a crowd of more than 200 to see their images and read their journey stories, which were printed on small cards that viewers read while walking up a ramp representing the journey from the refugee camps in Thailand to their new home in Indianapolis. In the atrium, photos were on display taken by participants of Project Einstein Thailand, depicting life at the Leadership Management Training College in the Mae La Refugee Camp. On the walk up the ramp, scenes of camp life were interspersed with facts about Burma, refugees in Indianapolis, and how to support new refugees through supporting Exodus Refugee services. At the  top of the ramp the framed images were on display, and viewers could speak with the photographers and eat refreshments, including Karen food made by one of the photographer’s family.

The reception was a truly special event, made possible by the work of many volunteers who helped hang the show, set up for the evening and invite viewers to come. Project Einstein Indianapolis is supported by the Clowes Fund, and a grant from the Washington Township Foundation paid for the printing and framing of the images. Most of all, I want to thank the staff and students at both schools who have made this program possible. They embody the idea of Project Einstein – that even though Einstein was a refugee, he could still do great things.

Check out more images from the reception, and stay tuned as we organize a joint show for the students work this spring. Contact info(at)digital-democracy.org if you would like to purchase any of the students’ images.

Photographers Eh Blue and Shar Ka Pru Say greet visitors along with Washington Township Superintendent Dr. Mervilde

Family members walking up the ramp at North Central, representing the journey from "Thailand" to "Indianapolis."

Article on DDOS attacks in Myanmar newspaper

The tripʼs goals were to conduct research through data mapping, perform trainings, and create media profiles and organizations. Dd visited Mandalay Division, Rakhine/Arakan State and Yangon/Rangoon Division. Digital Democracy has previously conducted research with Burmese groups in Thailand, Bangladesh India and China, creating a comprehensive study on information in and around the county.

In the lead up to elections in the country, information access is becoming more suspect. Arbor Networks points out that the county once again fell off the Internet. Over the course of the past several days, their main Internet service provider, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication suffered a large, sustained DDoS attack disrupting most network traffic in and out of the country. The other ISP, Redlink is reporting similar data loss.

We’re proud to be launching our report on the state of ICT in the country to help contribute to the often misunderstood reality on the ground. Despite the growing and lively sectors, there are still major limitations and room for improvement. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments.

Digital Democracy Burma Report

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 to Bangladesh to escape the human rights violations they’ve suffered in Burma, where they are also denied citizenship.

In the camp, Mark and Emily train a group of youth ages 9-14 in digital photography skills, enabling the kids to explore where in their lives they encounter such universal themes as peace, happiness, the disabled and sadness. See their photographs, listen to them as they reveal their dreams, their hopes for the future, and become the inspiration behind the creation of Project Einstein.

Little Brother - Burmese Cover

When brave people risk their lives for the greater good. When they’re accidentally giving an aggressive military a full roadmap to their extended contacts and friends, it’s unfortunate. Given Facebook’s recent breach of trust, allowing for more private data to leak out than people are comfortable with, there has been a growth in people knowing about their digital rights. This 21st century literacy is crucial.

But in places where data leakage is most risky, I’ve found that it’s also least understood. Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” is a compelling book about a teen and his friends who use technology to challenge an authoritarian regime. Using real-life technologies, the book is more than a thrilling story, but it can also become a viral training manual for activists who need to use technology to do their work and can start to do so more securely and effectively.

If you haven’t read the book yourself, I recommend buying a copy or downloading one for free to see what all the fuss is about. Why free? He talks about the benefits of publishing for free online over at the Guardian.

Thanks to all those that supported our Kickstarter campaign, I’m happy to bring to you the first in what will be our serialized release of “Little Brother” in Kachin, Karen and Burmese languages. To our partners at ABITSU for the translation. And thanks to Jonathan P. Berger for his cover design and overall inspiration.

Comments and questions from you are always appreciated. Our question is, when “Big Brother” is watching, who is watching back? This is another step towards answering it.

Little Brother - Kachin Cover

Little Brother - Karen Cover

Niki Jawerth has been working with us since January, and in that time has transformed from an Ushahidi novice to our Human Rights Cartographer in Chief. Focusing on Handheld Human Rights, she has single-handedly entered hundreds of human rights abuses into our Ushahidi map and has helped refine the material we use to train others. In addition to working with us, Niki is a graduate student at the School of International Service at American University. She is seeking a Masters degree in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs with an emphasis on human rights and social justice.  As a Swedish-American, Niki has utilized her international upbringing to her broaden her knowledge of human rights, and she hopes to impact the shaping of the global human rights framework in the future. It was her interest in Burma that brought her to Digital Democracy, and through her work with us she has been able to marry her passion for human rights to her background and excitement in technological innovation. Her internship with Digital Democracy will formally end this summer when she heads to Brussels, and we are excited to see how she will continue to leverage technology to promote international human rights.

Dragana Kaurin also got involved with Digital Democracy in January, responding to our call for help developing Ushahidi to track human rights in Burma. She has since worked on Handheld Human Rights as well as helped with our Haiti work, focusing on researching the status of Haitian women. Originally from Sarajevo, her family came to the US in the mid-90s as refugees. She recently graduated from Ohio State University with degrees in Arabic Language and Cultural Anthropology, and completed an honors thesis on the “The Socio-Cultural Impact of Turkey’s Ban on the Hijab: The Case of Leyla Sahin.” Well-traveled, she has worked and studied in Western Sahara territory, Bosnia and Syria, where she worked closely with Iraqi refugees. Her career has focused on human rights, with specific interests in the MENA region and Central Asia, and in the fields of women’s rights, cultural/structural violence, and refugee rights. She began interning with us following a six-month stint at UN OCHA where she worked at ReliefWeb. Her critical thinking and commitment to human rights have made her a perfect fit with our team, and we’ve particularly appreciated the work she and Niki have put into refining the categories for the Handheld Human Rights map.

In addition to Niki and Dragana, a team of students from an undergraduate course on Digital Media & Global Development at the University of Maryland has been helping log incidents as well as blogging about the experience. Along with Niki and Dragana, these volunteers are really pioneering how human rights information can be placed on a visual map and timeline. We’ve particularly learned from the challenges they have faced along the way, such as shifting through long-reports in search of data, or deciding exactly where to map an incident with often limited information. These lessons will be invaluable as we move forward and expand the scope of Handheld Human Rights.

Finally, we owe our biggest thank yous to our Burmese friends who translated Ushahidi into Burmese, enabling HHR to be fully functional in the language (download the zawgyi font to view Burmese script) and most of all to the incredible coalition of human rights organizations operating around Burma’s borders. On a daily basis human rights workers risk their lives to report on the realities inside Burma’s many states and divisions. By mapping their information on this dynamic map, we work to honor their research by making it more accessible and actionable.

Handheld Human Rights in Burmese

Government slogan in Ruili: “Speak Civilized, Act Civilized, Be Civilized.”

In 2008 Digital Democracy sent a team of researchers to China to investigate the state of Kachin youth in community-based and human rights organizations and their use of technology on the China-Burma border. The team conducted interviews with Kachin youth leaders and educators and led new media literacy and photography trainings. We are now releasing the results of that research and our recommendations in a new report.

For more information about our work there, please see the following report:
Digital Democracy China Report 2008

We used Kickstarter to run the campaign and we’re extremely happy with the results. Kickstarter is a funding platform that includes rewards for people who back the project, a way to send frequent updates, and an all-or-nothing deadline that encourages people to contribute in order to guarantee a project’s success.

We are so grateful to our backers! Thanks for making the project a success.

$5.00 and up — A shoutout on Twitter & in a thank you blog post & an invite to Digital Democracy’s Birthday Party

Sam Gregory, Charles Lenchner, Heather, Jason Kende, Chrysm Watson Ross, Pete Young, Yancey Strickler, Cristina Moon, Enigma Images, Liz Wall, Martha Jackson, Frank G, Matthew Murphy, Kyle B. Doeden, Jaroslav Valuch, Lara Shortridge, Eunah Choi, David Manheim, Mary Robinette and Patricia Chou.

$25.00 and up — A thank you in the Digital Democracy January newsletter + all of the above

Noel Hidalgo, Sarah Ann Ran, Martin Sutherland, Scott Andrews, Gregg Butensky, Timo Rossi, Ashley Mui and Elizabeth Stucki.

$50.00 and up— Stickers for Digital Democracy Sticker & the All Burma IT Student Union + all of the above

Joe Beshenkovsky, Christine Martin, Alex Shepard, Robert Soden, Carl Rigney, Dietrich Ayala, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Julia Posteraro, Allan Beatty and Kevin Riggle.

$100.00 and up — A copy of the book + all of the above

Jonathan Berger, Ben Babcock, David Cross, Stefan Jones, Brad Weikel, Eric Cooper, the publisher Tor Books and the book’s author, Cory Doctorow.

$250.00 — A video conference call with the Burmese activists/translators + all of the above

Nathan and Laura Arico.

Thanks to 46 backers, we’ve raised 75% of the money we need to translate Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother into four Burmese languages. It’s been amazing to see such support.

But we only have until Dec. 15th at 8pm EST to raise the rest of the amount. Can you chip in and pledge? If we don’t reach our goal, none of the project gets funded.

Special thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the Editor of Little Brother who posted a blog entry about the project. There have been lively comments, including this one from AndrDrew:

“Wow! I’ll be passing the word along about this project. I’m now wondering what other works would be good candidates.

It’s sad that Amazon’s rules mean non-americans can’t initiate Kickstarter projects. This is one amazing, and potentially game-changing way of fundraising.”

Little Brother tells the inspiring story of a group of courageous teens who take on Big Brother using technology to challenge an authoritarian regime. In September 2007 Burma/Myanmar, monks took to the streets in non-violent protest, using technologies – cell phones and digital cameras – as a means of documenting these protests, the world witnessed the extraordinary power of technology for enabling the flow of information, and as a way for so many citizens to express their struggle living in the country. As these technologies become increasingly available, it is vital that Burmese readers gain knowledge that will enable them to use the technologies they have most effectively.

The funds raised for the campaign will support Burmese activists living in Thailand, India and Bangladesh who will be translating the book into Burmese, Karen, Chin, and Rohingya.

Our campaign will continue through December 15th. Please visit the site today and pledge your support!

The topic of our class was “Grassroots Development – Techniques & Strategies,” discussing Digital Democracy‘s experiences doing fieldwork.  Before introducing the process by which we developed Handheld Human Rights and the story of developing it in the field, we wanted to have an understanding of how the students have begun to grow their own ideas. Having just completed their midterm assignments, we went around and had each group introduce themselves and their project, touching on these four points:

1. Who are you and what is your project?
2. How did you determine the need?
3. What’s your biggest barrier to success?
4. What impact do you hope to achieve?

Social Activism using Mobile Technology class & Dd Advisor Abby Goldberg

Visit my blog to read more about the class and their projects.