I was lucky enough to be invited to a Health Education Event in Salfit, West Bank yesterday. It made me think about the Digital Explorer model and how the expeditions so far have been short-lived in terms of actual time in the field, although the digital legacy lives on.
Would it be better to have long-term field-based projects say in the Middle East or Brazil that would continue to create digital media material after the team had left. This would also mean getting involved in capacity building and provision of hardware to projects around the world.
Rather than a single set of ripples from an event, a shift in the model would allow for an ongoing conversation between young people in the UK and young people around the world on important issues.
Any thoughts gratefully received…
ps thank you to Dalal of Merlin for hosting me yesterday and reinvigorating my desire to spend more time in the field
I think its an interesting thought to place technology in the field so there is more interaction longterm. The obvious problem that I see beyond maintainence and basic technical knowledge is when you give disadvantaged communities equipment like that sometimes it can be reappropriated for other uses.
How do you keep the people invested enough so that they feel like the project is their’s and they continue using the technology for the purpose that it was originally intended? I don’t know but I wonder if you have to set up a system where they are partially responsible for raising the funds for the computers/technology so that they feel more vested in the project… Interesting to think about…