Ushahidi means Witness in swahili.
Listen to interview of how it works.
It is absolutely brilliant.
Altamer
10 months ago
Monday, January 28, 2008
Ushahidi
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Meanwhile in the fiefdoms, the old familiar story continued, taking no account whatsoever of the new path being travelled by the maiden, who, from this moment on, will begin to tell her own story, the story that has been told by others an infinite number of times. - Avatars p 144
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1 comment:
Thanks for the questions. I going to try to respond to them in the order asked (be all official an' ting;).
What do you think about what is happening in Kenya right now?
I had a Kenyan friend at school who had once said to me that Trinidad sounds a lot like Kenya (post-colonial, multi-cultural, still working on getting the basics right). Yet, in the light of this current conflict (not an adequate word to describe the turmoil and violence), I cannot see Trinidad reaching that point, but I will also never say never.
The international community is leaning towards classifying the situation as civil strife / ethinic cleansing(this article was useful to me: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/africa/31kenya.html). In my opinion that kind of labelling makes the issue seem like solely a national / internal problem, that the international community, at best, should keep an eye on, but not intervene in unless it worsens. A plus with respect to the sovereignty of nations but not so for those killed, injured, displaced. I wish the African Union would speak out more. After all, it is happening in their region. The situation has much deeper socio-politico-economic roots than disgruntlement with election results, ethnically-aligned political parties.
Do you perceive violence in Trinidad as being along racial lines?
Hmmm. I am not a criminologist or sociologist, but from what I observe in the news and what I see/hear out there, crime takes place at all sectors of the society. If the focus is violent crime (non-domestic disputes gone awry), then I would say that the perpetrators belong to the segment of the population that is most socio-economically marginalised. If that segment belongs to a particular racial group, then I would be interested in finding out why (different familial constructs?). The victims of crimes, however, seem to fall across the board, but may be concentrated amongst a certain sector. I think that by this stage, all Trinis can say that they have in some way been affected by crime, or know someone who has (robbery, rape) However, not all can say that they know someone who was "gunned down."
I do not see violent crime being racially motivated. Crimes, if anything, seem to be intra-racial. Yet, as a woman, I feel that all persons might pose an equal threat to me. Wonder if men would say the same?
Do you think Ushahidi could work for us?
To be honest, I had not heard of this before you mentioned it. So thanks for bringing it to my attention. I think it is a novel initiative - another medium to use in the reporting of crime (besides reporting in person or via telephone). Certainly the mapping functions bring a whole visual element to the presentation of crime-related figures, statistics.
The population in Trinidad that uses the Internet is roughly 12% (2006 figures from http://www.internetworldstats.com/car/tt.htm) and I would guess that this small percentage is limited to a particular socio-economic group (upper to middle class). I therefore do not know how effective such a project would be, if launched in Trinidad, but at least there is another option available to the population.
Trust seems to be a big issue here when it comes to the reporting of crimes. If you try to report a crime by the telephone (the usual means), the following questions might enter your mind and those questions could also be extended to reporting via the Internet:
Is the phone / site consistently working? Will the phone be answered / Will my contribution be submitted? How can I be sure that even if they do not ask for my name, they will not track me in some way? (reverse phone directory / IP number). Most importantly, will they follow up on what I report in a timely fashion / do they have the staffing to do so?
If the stakeholders can overcome those trust issues and effectively promote the various reporting tools, then we (the potential reporters of crime) might have a good chance at making a difference.
I know that I wrote a lot, but you really got me thinking!
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