Jessica Fraser is part of Mobile Movement, one of 17 HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media & Learning winners, and she posted a wonderful update over at the Digital Media & Learning Winners' Hub that we felt really captured the essence of what Mobile Movement is doing with digital media. Read on! And feel free to comment or ask questions.

"We are learning to make more connections, and to use them in service of a greater vision."
-Leba Haber Rubinoff, artist

Alright everyone,

Here is what you?ve all been waiting for?the second update to our blog. And for those of you who scrutinized our first posting with wonder and excitement?please note that there have been some changes to the process and schedule based on our work in Nairobi and discoveries we?ve made upon testing the concept with the youth groups, the administering NGO, thinkers at UN Habitat and our own insights. Rest assured, the concept is still the same:

1) We are going to change the way people support grassroots youth projects with direct telecommunications, and

2) We are energizing our generation with a new culture of philanthropy: one that is accessible, cool, fun and full of passion.

However, we are not telling the story of five out of fifteen youth groups (this would create imbalance among and between the groups who are equally impressive, spirited and seeking to uplift themselves and their communities against tremendous odds.) Instead, we are using ?one? video as a positioning piece about how inspiring these young people are and positing the question to North American audiences, ?if your community was filled with garbage, rife with disease, had skyrocketing unemployment and no education for the poor?what would you do?? The a-ha being that with the advent of globalization ? and technology collapsing distance ? we all do live in this ?community?. In addition to this positioning piece, there will be several portraits ? a walk around a slum; garbage collection as a means of cleaning up neighborhoods and in turn reducing fatal diseases and generating income; youth-led merry-go round microfinancing; jewelry and clothing production; and how young people are schooling orphans and children too poor to pay nominal public school fees.

As a consequence, our test user site will not profile two youth groups but ALL the youth groups?and we will not be asking for our philanthropists to donate to one group in particular but to an urban entrepreneurship fund that will administer tools, equipment and training to the fifteen youth groups and their members. In effect, we have learned about merry-go-round financing from the youth (where everyone pools their resources and then they start financing their members) and will similarly be pooling donors? resources to pay for items necessary for the youth?s businesses to flourish. This decision was also influenced by the experience and expertise of Environmental Youth Alliance: the cost of administering individual micro-loans will prove too expensive and take away from the efficacy of the program.

We have just returned from Nairobi, all the shooting has been done, we are editing up a storm, all meetings have been had, not to mention many bottles of wine drunk?

Who are we? Leba Haber Rubinoff, artist, our creative leader, interactive designer and filmmaker who with Karun Koernig, head of the international wing of Environmental Youth Alliance, conceived of the idea of Mobile Movement. Melanda Schmid, fearless corporate refugee who decided to take her rising star status in Hotel HR and apply it to development. We?re talking ?fearless? folks. This woman, who had never learned to drive in Canada, got her license in Nairobi and has proceeded to drive around facing accident fatalities at every corner. Scott Smith, celebrated feature filmmaker and television director, and Jess Fraser (writer of the second installment of the blog and therefore deeply uncomfortable with any description beyond extraordinary producer/filmmaker with limitless talent.)

What we have discovered has been very powerful?and some of our questions have already been answered. What is clear is that these young people are incubators of change. Products of a lost generation that was unable to provide leadership, the young people we are working with in the slums are taking things into their own hands, determined to become role-models for their peers, the community, and the children coming after them (more than 60% of the population of Kenya is under the age of 30).

Upon our arrival we gave each youth group a mobile phone, and then delivered a crash course (I believe it?s described as media training in our outline) on how to transmit media (emails, photos and short video clips). By giving them the mobile phones, the idea is that the youth groups can continue to tell their own stories?allowing story to unfold, the narrative to continue. Beyond the immediate advantage this gives their organizations (conducting business, dealing with clients, networking) ? the youth recognized it as a communication tool that could help them engage with their North American counterparts.

On a personal note, I was very conscious of driving into the slums in the proverbial 4x4 range rover-esque vehicle. Tumbling out with sunglasses affixed to ours heads and camera equipment carried in our hands or slung over our shoulders. The time spent with the groups was real?intimate in a way. And yet we always left, after a few hours, or at the end of the day, heading home to our starkly opposite existences ? not only in Nairobi but also in the States and Canada respectively. I have been struggling with this contradiction?aware that I want more for Mobile Movement?that the story, the technology, will truly build some form of relationship?that it won?t simply be a to means for people to click pay-pal and for that to be the end. Rather, I am hoping that Mobile Movement will stimulate a beginning. That we can create intimacy and teamwork between people who have never met each other; that this will this lead to great connections and partnerships between the developed and developing world.

A friend recently sent me a speech by Adam Kahane*that has helped me deepen my approach to this question? this journey that we are on. Kahane writes, ?If we want to be able to address our toughest social challenges, then we have to become bilingual. We have to learn to speak fluently two languages that are not translatable one into the other. We have to learn to speak both the language of power and the language of love." He uses two particular and unusual definitions of love and power, from theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich said power is "the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity." So power in this sense is the drive to achieve one's purpose, to get one's job done, to grow. And he said love is "the drive towards the unity of the separated."

It seems to me this is exactly what we are trying to achieve ? and what we have learned from the young people in the slums of Nairobi: the potential to realize one?s life despite the incredible hardship and that we are all interdependent?that we have an opportunity to join one another, that we are one.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a student of Tillich. In one of his last speeches, King spoke about the imperative of reconciling power and love. "Power without love," he said, "is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. This collision of immoral power with powerless morality constitutes the major crisis of our time."

So how do we ensure that we are all using our power and our capacity to love? that we don?t trip into accepting immoral power or immerse ourselves in powerless morality?

Time will tell.