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#justice - International Day for Sharing Life Stories

Challenges Entered: 

In 2008, the Museum of the Person Network and the network of the Center for Digital Storytelling joined together to create a celebration of life story work in the context of social justice.   The campaign declared May 16, 2008 the International Day for Sharing Life Stories, in part to honor the birthday of noted oral historian, Studs Terkel.   The campaign reached 20 countries and over 100 separate events were held. In 2009, the theme Journeys Toward Justice was chosen to reflect a specific focus on human rights and migration stories for this year's event.   We have chosen to create a twitter/cell phone based project that will begin on this day to collect and map twitter 140 character texts,   as well as image and video testimonials about people who have made a difference in their lives in their or their communities journey toward justice.   Our current website, ausculti.org, will be re-launched in mid-april based on the model of the current site of the Brazil Memory Network (see http://www.bmr.org.br), one of the projects of the Museum of the Person.   Our goal is that by expanding our grassroots campaign around life stories to include, we can expose more and more people to the importance of life story writing and media work in the cause of social justice.

Project Details
Project video: 
Project Assessment
Financial support: 
No
Sustainability Model: 
Both of our organizations are able to support the campaign as part of general mission to build interest and support for life story work.   However that support is limited, and we continue to seek sponsorship/advertising partnerships with human rights organizations for the program, discussions have occured with organizations such as Witness, Panos, and Ashoka to encourage partnerships.  
Expertise needed: 
Marketing/Media Expertise: We are hoping to extend our networks around the world in significant ways to make the International Day an ongoing campaign.   We need assistance in reaching the media.   Despite today's front page article in the Wall Street Journal on the Museum of the Person, see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123716837027436821.html#project%3DMUSEUM0903%26articleTabs%3Darticle, we have made this project at an absolutely grassroots level with no funding to this point.   We want to find ways to expand the connections between this work and other human rights and migration-focussed organizations.   We are already active in facebook and twitter but would love to expand.
Technical Expertise: We are familiar with some of the models of cell phone based projects integrated with Web sites, we still have much need of support to make the project as fluid and use friendly as possible.   We also need support in conceptualizing the interface design for how the stories, once captured, can be organized for people to connect with each other.
Project goals: 
May 16, 2009 - First beta of #justice program, communities invited to send sample SMS testimonialsSeptember 2009 - Expand project to include image and video contributionsJanuary 2010 - Introduce 2010 campaign to existing communityMay 2010 - Demonstration project involving greatly expanded audience across our networks.
Identified Obstacles: 
1. Lack of appropriate staff resources to maintain project, need to identify and outsource project management2. Lack of sponsorship opportunities given current economic environment.

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