Hello everybody! )  

I am a REAL  living, breathing and successful outcome of the 3rd phase of the Fearless City Mobile Project!

I am a young, minority, marginalized woman from this area who has learned to use mobile cellphones to successfully change my life and  help empower the  lives of others in my area.  

I live and work in what's known as the Poorest Postal Code of Canada. Please read the following wikipedia on my neighborhood....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Eastside

In a very brief summary:

With the chance to acquire mobile handsets and learning how to do  SMS/MMS texting, livestream our community generated media  to mobile big screens, we not only were able to participate in city  festivals and engage with our communities, we were able to do alot more event reporting and hyper local news updates that helps  each other and our  fellow neighbors and citizens in our area.   Next Year, this  small city will be the host to the 2010 Winter  Olympic and we are under the media spotlight already.  

If we are able to continue this wonderful project ( we have since already "graduated" from learning the basics of mobile technology and social media.... we would be able to continue to represent ourselves, and counteract what may be a one sided view of us and our area.  

Given the chance to still maintain our own presence and our  own reporting through building a  large scale wireless network for all  of us to be able to use the internet, train others on how to use mobile handsets, to record, document, livetream and archive their lives to positively change it to counter - surveillance tactics  of wrong doers - and wrong doing of our area, we would be able to go forward into the future and know that we were able to help ourselves with the usage of handserts.

I  , myself, as a young woman came into Fearless City Mobile Project, as a underemployed, underdocumented woman with a transient past... I was very much in the position of possibly falling through the cracks -   I was trying to leave an abusive stalker who was a violent and abusive man and through Fearless City helping me in understanding mobile technology with livestreaming and text messaging applications... I was able to see that HE was properly dealt within the confines of Law Enforcement...He is now imprisioned what  he has done  to me - he terrorized my life day and night  and the lives of my friends :( :(

   I was able to regain my self-esteem and  control of my life and through the peer training and peer leadership opportunities of Fearless City Mobile.   Through encouragement of my mentors - I   have grown to have a very big interest in exploring mobile cell phone technology and how it keeps people safe through instant communication and through photos,videos and livestreaming content...

I might not have been here if it wasn't for Fearless City Mobile Project - they saved my life and the lives of others for their future way of thinking - Cellphones do save lives and I shudder to think that I might have become a sad and sorry statistic if I didn't have access to cellphones or technology.

I thank my mentors and my new friends who have seen my progression through a scared, and fragile woman who feared for her safety and feeling  uncertain of the future to a proud and secure woman who wishes to learn more about community empowerment through the cellphones and techonology sectors.

I help others in a similiar situation by being their personal cheerleader and help peer train them on cellphones and making their lives more digitally rewarding :)

Thank you for reading my story and please vote for Fearless CIty Mobile Project :)