Background

Global Kids, one of the 2008 HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media & Learning winners, launched their beta site, RezEd.org, with 230 signing into the new network during the first two weeks.

At the 2009 Digital Media & Learning showcase in Chicago, the 2008 winners Virtual Peace, Sustainable South Bronx: GreenLab, and Black Cloud were featured in this introductory video.

Last year, The Global Fund for Children won a Digital Media and Learning Competition grant, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, to build GFC’s capacity to capture, share, and promote knowledge gained by its grantee partners working with youth throughout the world. Over the last few months, five GFC grantee partners in Asia and Latin America have started to support this initiative by using a new digital camcorder called the Flip camera.

Young social entrepreneurs are not just creating Facebook pages, collecting friends and/or followers, and circulating petitions. They are also crafting business plans, forming partnerships with the private & public sectors, raising funds, redirecting profits back into their projects, and aggressively trying to educate and advocate around their issues. For the most part, they lack ego around their own accomplishments and spend much of their time seeking to learn from their peers and other professionals about how to do things better, smarter, and more sustainably. They are, without exception, changing lives.

Global Fund for Children, a winner of the 2008 HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media & Learning winner, uses digital storytelling with the YP Foundation, a grantee partner working with youth in New Delhi, India.

Princeton Laptop Orchestra, or PLOrk, is a 2008 HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media & Learning winner. Drop in to find out how the first rehearsal of the season is going.

MILLEE (Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies), one of the 2008 HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media & Learning winners, introduces e-learning to children in rural Indian villages.