Deep in the A2S headquarters, amidst website development and lots of video logging, we have been discussing how to make a video go viral. You post it on youtube, you tag it, you give it a fun catchy name, you bless it with the social media gods, and hope it takes off. Ok, so far so good, until we get to the take off part. Yes, there are experts with many varying ideas for success and I have read quite a few of them – mix luck and a huge network, and you’re getting close. If you have contacts at other blogs you can ask them to embed it and we certainly haven’t exhausted all our resources in that vein yet. We work it on Facebook and Twitter, and do have some success. But it is difficult, preparing to launch the first videos created by our workshop participants and being uncertain how far and wide we can spread them. The workshop participants need to get these videos out to make change and gain support to clean up the river. What can we do?
This week I talk about my experience as a videographer covering IMDEC at a National Dam Conference, and I included a few photos. I also discuss an impromptu tour of the Río Santiago on a day when there was nothing but white foam covering the expanse of the river. You’ll see Flip camera footage by a friend, Rodrigo, who brought me on the tour.
The past few weeks were busy ones indeed. Between reworking our website, coordinating volunteers, preparing for the photo exposition, starting our video workshops, and helping out at IMDEC’s environmental fairs, we have been going going going. After launching the photo exposition in the newly formed El Salto Cultural House on Friday night, we helped IMDEC take it on tour in La Huizachera and Sierra del Tigre. IMDEC works with both of these communities, and runs popular environmental education programs with children.
<== Check out our new logo!!! Infinite thanks to the very talented and hardworking Jon Doyle of Jon Doyle Design.
After feedback, constructive criticism and more time on the ground, we’ve decided to amend our mission statement. Without further ado:
Our mission is to empower and connect communities adapting to water scarcity. By providing technical assistance to expand the use of social media, we are contributing to participatory grassroots organizing within local communities. Over time, we aim to improve the communication internationally among communities that are facing water scarcity.
We’re gearing up to finally start our community video project with the FlipVideo cameras in El Salto and Juanacátlan. Our first group will be made up of high school students already working to investigate the serious negative health effects of the highly polluted Rio Santiago. We’ll be posting more details soon!
Recently, we began the fun experience of helping the kids in IMDEC’s environmental clubs put together their photo exposition. First, with Cecilia, our Argentinian collaborator counterpart and talented photographer, we delved through well over 2,000 photos and narrowed them down to 70. As we explained to the kids, photo expositions are all about creating a narrative, so we were careful to choose photos that captured more of their lives, the environment they live in, and their ongoing participation in digital storytelling/environmental education. Read more »
We thought it would be a good idea to take a step back and share a brief overview of the communities around Guadalajara that we’re working with. At the moment, there are three:
While they are geographically disparate and are facing their own unique issues, they are all a part of the Río Santiago watershed. To get a better sense of the area and the communities we’re working with, be sure to check out the map at the end of the post!
On Wednesday our friend Pablo from IMDEC took us on a powerful tour of the municipio of El Salto where he lives. We revisited La Huizachera and voyaged southeast away from the city, tracking the Canal Ahogado’s path to where it feeds into the Rio Santiago. Then we followed the Rio Santiago through the largest industrial corridor in Guadalajara, stopping to explore the El Salto/Juanacatlan waterfalls, and finished our trip along the Rio Santiago in rural Juanacatlan. It was a difficult journey.
This past weekend we visited the community of Temacapulin, a small pueblo nestled in between cliffs and hills in the highlands of Jalisco. The emotions that washed over us as we drove in at dusk, realizing the whole town could be submerged under water in a few years, were surreal and intense.
We finally sat down and hammered out the official mission for Adapting to Scarcity. It’s been guiding us since the beginning – it just took us some time to put into words.
Our mission is to empower and connect communities adapting to water scarcity. By providing technical infrastructure to leverage social media, we facilitate participatory, grassroots organizing within and between local communities on a global scale.
Our mission is to empower and connect communities adapting to water scarcity. With digital and internet-based social media tools, we aim to help these communities share their knowledge and experiences. We believe that this global grassroots information sharing will help strengthen and build movements adapting to water scarcity worldwide. [Updated 21 November, 2009]
Furthermore, we’ve laid out our objectives for the next 6-9 months in Gudalajara, Mexico:
1. Make a documentary for IMDEC (Instituto Mexicano para el Desarrollo Comunitario) to strengthen the local movements struggling to adapt to water scarcity. Using 6 (or more!) FlipVideo cameras as well as a high definition video camera, the documentary will be filmed in part by participants in these local movements as well as ourselves. Topics to be covered/goals include:
Popular education efforts by IMDEC (eg environmental education and photography project by children)
Efforts by IMDEC to facilitate the organizing capacity of local communities
Raise awareness about contamination levels in the local watershed
Rio Santiago, which flows through the greater Guadalajara area, is one of the most polluted rivers in the world
All of Guadalajara’s untreated effluent (human and industrial) flows into this river.
Factories, under the protection of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), are dumping their waste into the river.
Raise awareness about and share solutions and alternatives
2. Create a web-based media library to connect local movements adapting to water scarcity around the world and to facilitate global knowledge sharing.
The initial media for the site will be generated by those participating in filming the documentary as well as footage from our friends in GroundwaterUp project in New Delhi, India
People from around the world will be able to easily upload, edit and share their own media clips through the site using already existing, open source software/technology
Users and communities will be able to organize locally and globally through the site (specifics TBD)
Ideally, media uploaded to the site will focus on strategies, solutions and failures movements worldwide. This will help prevent communities from reinventing the wheel and allow relevant solutions to be implemented where they’re needed most.
As an organization with the intent of serving local communities, we expect these objectives to be as dynamic as the communities we’ll be working with in and around Guadalajara. And of course, we are open to your thoughts, comments and questions!
The inspiration for the name of our project Adapting to Scarcity came from a conference on climate change I attended a few years ago. One of the speakers described how important it is to begin adaptively managing our resources, for example as the water cycle is altered and vegetation zones move north with climate change.
Deep in the A2S headquarters, amidst website development and lots of video logging, we have been discussing how to make a video go viral. You post it on youtube, you tag it, you give it a fun catchy name, you bless it with the social media gods, and hope it takes off. Ok, so far so good, until we get to the take off part. Yes, there are experts with many varying ideas for success and I have read quite a few of them – mix luck and a huge network, and you’re getting close. If you have contacts at other blogs you can ask them to embed it and we certainly haven’t exhausted all our resources in that vein yet. We work it on Facebook and Twitter, and do have some success. But it is difficult, preparing to launch the first videos created by our workshop participants and being uncertain how far and wide we can spread them. The workshop participants need to get these videos out to make change and gain support to clean up the river. What can we do?
Logistics | sarah | 
19 February 2010 17:43 | 
Comments (0) 
English
