Day 1. Tuesday 17th June
Registration was a horrible, long winded process which involved a lot of sitting around waiting, as well as trying to convince several service personnel that we are nice enough for them to help us. After 6 hours and a few false starts we were finally registered. We got our passes that proudly declare us as delegates and we went off to the grand hall for the opening speeches and lunch.
Day 2. Wednesday 18th June
Glancing through the programme it's surprising that there's so many speeches planned with dialogue sessions seeming to take a back seat. Today is all speeches but tomorrow looks better with breakaway sessions planned.
I'm interested to see what the ratio of adults to youth is here - at a guess I'd say it's less than 40% youth.
The opening ceremony was a performance of a hip hop piece with all the dancers in oversize white t-shirts so popular in the USA, and went on to combine contemporary african influences with hindi as well as gumboot dancing, all to the beat of african drums. Children with the flags of the world then lined the red carpet for the dignitaries to enter the hall and 'Nkosi Sikelela' was sung.
Rt Hon M Mudavadi, Deputy Prime Minister of Kenya, one of the first speakers succintly summarised his speech's message of investment in youth with the quote, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
Beki Cele, member of the Executive Council for Transport, Community Safety and Liason, Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN) entertained the audience with his humourous, easy-going manner and his colleague, KZN Premier Sbu Ndebele got everyone thinking with his reclassification of the recent violence in South Africa as "Afrophobia" rather than xenophobia. He spoke further about exorcising the morbid hatred of slaves by other slaves resulting from the legacy of colonisation.
While the older and more diplomatic delegates gave much time to the thanking of all the right people, and saying how great this conference is, it was the younger speakers that really inspired.
After the break the combined Plenary and Dialogue session began and here was the start of real dialogue with audience comments coming from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Canada and the Ivory Coast.
Father Mkhatshwa delivered a good practical speech using ordinary language rather than the high register style so often favoured by diplomats. He described "the excessive exaggeration of the importance of money" as a factor that is responsible for so much violence in the world today, and spoke of the power of the media to influence people. He also emphasized the inculcation of moral, ethical, and spiritual values from an early age to combat the contradictory message of "money culture".
Gavin Sheppard of The Remix Project, Canada really did the youth proud with his speech of "idealism and optimism, not jaded by cynicism". His speech in two words is Courage and Humility. "Courage to stand by our convictions, by our promises, by our visions, by our truth, and humility to know that we can do better and that the best ideas may not come from ourselves." He pointed out that alienation of individuals, of groups, of sections of society is the root of the world's problems, "whether malignant like apathy, or cancerous like violence."
His speech ended with the call to action, that "the youth need to be greater than the sum of their parts; and equal to their dreams."
With the conclusion of this first dialogue session, the audience was entertained by a performance by men from the Department of Correctional Services Rehabilitation Program.
Day 3. Thursday 19th June
Today is the breakaway seesions so everyone splits up into smaller venues and hopefully there will be more dialogue and less speech making.
Hip hop and Safer Cities - Art and Culture as a Community Engagement and Development Tool: From policy to the front lines.
Things are moving slowly, like yesterday many people seem to be late, so everyone is behind schedule. This session begins with Kyauna, an 18 year old and graduate of The Remix Project, singing a soulful song without the help of a backing track.
With the audience now in awed silence, Amanda Paris, also of The Remix Project, Schools Without Borders, and Lost Lyrics kicked off the dialogue.
Lost Lyrics is an alternative education system in her home town of Toronto, that began with the inspiration of wanting people to know that the Canadian public education system is biased. The government and school system refuse to acknowledge that Canada is stolen land and minorities voices are silenced. The traditional classroom environment is too boring and lacking in stimulus and an alternative was needed.
The movement called Lost Lyrics began.
Her and a friend, Natasha Daniel took the new approach of combining hip hop with the telling of minority's histories in a way that was entertaining to the youth as well as educating. They started going to two communities that are considered to be "ghetto neighbourhoods" twice a week and meeting with children between the ages of 9 and 16. Their first subject was the Haitian Revolution. This initial effort defined how the project would work, as it was the feedback that the children gave that shaped the lessons to come.
At the end of the term, Lost Lyrics put on a show called the "Live Report Card" which brought the community in to hear from the children what they've learnt and so indirectly educate themselves by benefiting from the children's education.
Gavin Sheppard of The Remix Project took the podium next and explained with the help of a video just what The Remix Project is all about. They have three programmes running which are the Media Arts programme, the Creative Arts programme, and a Business programme. All run over a period of 6 months and each accept only ten students at a time, so one needs to show a lot of potential to get in. Everyone who applies for the courses is granted an interview. Those who are lucky enough to be accepted develop, hand-in-hand with the co-ordinators, a 6 month plan, setting out realistic goals of what they want to achieve.
After completion of the 6 months, there is a period of informal follow up to further support the young artist or entrepeneur.
The Project has three exit strategies: One is education. Because they work with the education board, The Remix Project can earn students high school credits, and various colleges and universities have offered scholarships to course-graduates. The second is industry. While they can't guarantee a job, students will get at least an internship and The Remix Project strives to find suitable mentors for their graduates. The third is that of entrepeneurship. Canada has many grants available for people to start their own initiatives and The Remix Project can tell its graduates which doors to knock on.
The next speakers were Andrew Lens from Schools without Borders (SWB), and Sandro from Soldiers Never More. Both are projects based in Rio De Janeiro but SWB is a Canadian initiative.
Both organisations are alternative education systems. SWB runs a cultural and social exchange programme that sees students from Canada spend two weeks in Rio and then students from Brazil spend two weeks in Canada.
SWB's latest project is a collaboration between themselves, The Remix Project and IBISS, another Rio-based organisation. By 2009 they hope to have a Media school up and running in one of the slums offering free education in music, photography and video.
Soldiers Never More is a project that operates in 56 poor communities in Brazil, educating around 2000 children a day in both school and sporting activities.
A short documentary video of Soldiers Never More's work explains the problem faced by the youth in the slums, the hopelessness of no future in either construction or the drug trade, and the trade's lure of money. With few resources to improve their situations, many people fall into the trade for material gain. The traditional escapes of football, capoeira, and percussion are not enough and the youth need an education that will teach them a profession, which leads to the excitement about the proposed Media school.
The next two speakers were Lydette and Dagmawi, of Harvard University and Cornell University respectively. They are involved in some very interesting academic work to give African Hip hop a greater prominence in the world's eyes, the role of hip hop in education, and in the preservation of indigenous languages and gave very interesting presentations.
Durban's own Ian Robinson aka 'Ewok' finished off the speeches with a talk about his own organisation, LifeCheck Youth Development Initiative. What began as 'Bling Free' and a few DJs, Graffiti artists, and B-boys has become a regular open mic session once a month at the community supported Bat Centre. The Bat Centre provides the venue, a wall for grafitti, and various workshops for those that are interested.
The session disbanded shortly afterwards to catch the tail end of lunch and concluded a very succesful workshop.
