Project Overview

Independent Media Center • www.indymedia.org

PLANS UNDERWAY FOR AN INDEPENDENT MEDIA CONVERGENCE
CENTER FOR THE 2011 WORLD SOCIAL FORUM IN DAKAR, SENEGAL

Some 100 media-makers from Africa will be joined by delegations from across the
world for a three-week experience of training, networking and collaboration.
Organizers seek donations of funds, equipment and food.

Dear Friends,

Your help and participation is needed in a historic mobilization of creative and technical solidarity in conjunction with the 2011 World Social Forum (WSF)!

From January 23rd through February 11th, organizers, media makers and communication technologists from four continents will construct an independent media center to facilitate and resource grassroots coverage of the 10th annual global gathering, which is being held in Dakar, Senegal.

The experience will include intensive, hands-on training in community media and internet technology for activists and community organizers, with a special emphasis on training women and young people. In keeping with the global Indymedia network's decade-long commitment to participatory structures and each-one-teach-one community-based learning, organizers and techies from Africa and around the world will train each other in content production and infrastructure development. Workshops will address online publishing, street art, radio transmitter construction, and emerging Internet technology such as cell phone uploads and decentralized server management. Participants will live and work together for three weeks, forming lasting relationships and networks both within the continent and across the globe. The first two weeks will be spent learning, collaborating, and
socializing. During the third week, participants will put these skills to work to provide ongoing coverage of the WSF — including a live webcast, FM broadcasting, blogging, and print dispatches.

This will be the fourth such media center that has been organized in Africa through the Indymedia network — an international alliance of grassroots media producers and communication technologists that first convened to provide coverage of the 1999 protests against the WTO in Seattle, WA. In March 2004, the foundations Umverteilen in Berlin and XminusY in Amsterdam joined a handful of Indymedia collectives across the globe to
fund the first Regional Alternative Media/Indymedia Conference in Africa in Dakar. The first of its kind, the Conference brought together some two dozen community organizers from Ambazonia (Cameroon), Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, the Canary Islands, Mali, Germany, Switzerland and Senegal. The effort was followed by the creation of an Indymedia Center two years later at the polycentric WSF in Bamako, Mali. Encouraged by these successes, we went on to organize a Convergence Media Center at the 2007 WSF in Nairobi, Kenya. This center brought together over fifty organizers from South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, France, the US and Kenya. Participants shared skills, made media and even built two radio transmitters — one was subsequently used to launch Maseno University's Equator FM in Kenya, and the other donated to KOCH-FM in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi. KOCH-FM was the first community radio station in Nairobi, but before the
Convergence their old transmitter persistently broke down.

Thus far, 96 delegates from across Africa have registered for the Dakar2011 Independent Media Convergence Center. They include media makers, human rights activists, university students and youth from Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Ambazonia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Rwanda and the Diaspora. Delegations are currently forming from independent media and tech communities in the United States, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

There are three main goals that we hope this convergence will meet:
·         Build media production and distribution skills within existing African social movements and the Indymedia network in Africa
·         Develop relationships that both creates and strengthens solidarity and networks of mutual support amongst groups on the African continent and around the world
·         Provide in-depth coverage for the WSF — including documentation of key panels, interviews with organizers, and reporting on deliberations that can inspire and inform organizing across the continent.— so as to extend the reach of these conversations.

We invite you to join us in this effort. We need donations of funds, equipment and expertise in order to support this process and make the convergence space a reality. Our main costs are transportation and accommodation, as well as supplies and equipment. Our goal is to raise $200,000 in donations and in-kind contributions by December 31, 2010.

You can also help us reach this goal with donations of tools and equipment. Equipment needed includes computers, computer accessories, networking equipment, video cameras, projectors, and radio supplies. A list with detailed requirements is viewable here: https://docs.indymedia.org/Local/Dakar2011EquipmentList. If you think you can help us procure any of these items, please contact one of our tech pointpeople: Alioune
(badaradiop@gmail.com) for Africa; Alster (Alster@indymedia.org) for Europe; Jamie (jamie@mayfirst.org) for
the Americas.

Monetary donations can be made through Paypal to imc-africa@indymedia.org. Tax-deductible donations can be made in the US through our fiscal sponsor, Urbana Champaign Independent Media Center (UCIMC) who have 501(c)3 status. Please include “Indymedia Africa Dakar 2011” in the memo of checks to UCIMC. UCIMC's address for mailing checks is:

Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
ATTN: Treasurer
202 S. Broadway Ave. Ste 100
Urbana, IL 61801

In addition to donating as an individual, your organization, congregation or union could also sponsor a media delegate, and we could arrange for them to make a report-back and presentation upon return. We can also accept donations of frequent flyer miles. To help in any of these ways, or you have any questions about this project, you can contact Sphinx (sphinx@indymedia.org) or Amy (amylorraine@phillyimc.org).

You can get in touch with the working group by writing to imcafrica@lists.indymedia.org. Feel free to browse through the imc-africa list archives for an idea of the enthusiastic organizing that is taking place: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-africa/


Thank you in advance for your help!

Patrick Bond, Centre for Civil Society in Durban
C.T. Lawrence Butler, Food Not Bombs Publishing
David John Bwakali, Africa Youth Trust
Danielle Chynoweth, Prometheus Radio Project
DeeDee Halleck, Waves of Change, Deep Dish TV
Sean Jacobs, The New School
Laura Livoti, Justice in Nigeria Now
Alfredo Lopez, Mayfirst / People Link
Maka Muñoz, Palabra Radio
Sowore Omoyele, Sahara Reporters
Alan Sterman, Tachanka Tech Collective
and the entire IMC-Africa working group!!
(Organizations are listed for identification purposes only.)