First Impressions & Partnerships

;

Things are moving fast and furiously here in Bangui.

I have fully installed myself into the Internews joint office / house – a setup that is not-so-groovy in terms of privacy and personal space, but optimal in terms of uninterrupted sleepless work-flows.

The landscape

I am starting to orient myself to this city. Bangui is caressed by green hills and bounded by the mighty Oubangui River, which provides a stunning view of the Democratic Republic of Congo, just across the bank. I am also getting familiar with daily operational challenges, including regular power cuts and totally unpredictable internet connectivity. Such factors are critical elements in the custom-design of our platform.

Our partners and contacts

Association of Journalists for Human Rights in the Central African Republic – an inspiring group of young professionals.

By liaising with the network of 11 community radios (and soon with an additional 20 correspondents in the field), they will be one of the main sources in our project’s information flow, ensuring an exchange of communication about humanitarian events and the needs of local communities, particularly the most remote and least connected communities.

I also have had the pleasure of meeting several strategic international partners - including the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders - in a series of bilateral discussions about our project. They are all very interested in it and waiting for more operational details.

As discussed in previous posts, this project will use new technologies and methodologies, including crowd-sourcing and Ushahidi, to create visual maps of crisis points in the country. One of our greatest challenges at this stage of the project has been to verbally describe the visual tool we are developing to those who have never seen something like it. My hand drawings on note paper have helped somewhat:

Links to other existing interactive crisis maps (i.e. Libya andColombia) have also been useful, but I am confident that this task will become exponentially easier once our pilot goes online at the end of March.

Looking forward

I am encouraged by the arrival this week of Jacobo Quintanilla, Internews’ Director of Humanitarian Information Projects (@jqg) and Anahi Ayala, Internews’ Media Innovation Advisor for the Africa Region and Humanitarian Operations (@anahi_ayala). They’ll be here for two weeks, starting March 20th, and their presence will help immensely with the general coordination and the technical details needed to make this project a success. After all of our interactions via e-mail, Twitter and Skype, it will be delightful to finally meet them in person! Next week, Patrick Vinck will also join us and stay with the team for ten days to get the monitoring and evaluation (M&;E) component up and running; Patrick will act as our M&;E focal point throughout the project. I am looking forward to learning from all of them, and the many lessons they have to share .

The presence of all three of these colleagues here in the Central African Republic coincides with the training I am currently organizing for the community radio station staff. I’ve been working on this since arriving a few weeks ago, along with Jeroen Corduwener, Internews’ Project Director for CAR and Côte d’Ivoire and Roger Clavet, Internews CAR’s Resident Journalism Advisor. Over 30 participants from across the country will come to Bangui the first week of April to receive new hardware, refresh on reporting techniques and radio editing, meet humanitarian partners and train on new technologies such as crowd-sourcing, Frontline SMS and Ushahidi.

So as you can see, though the mangos are almost ripe and the beginning of the rainy season is almost nigh, we are also not forgetting to keep busy.

Stay tuned for far more to come!

Raimondo Chiari

Humanitarian &; Media Liaison Officer - Internews Central African Republic (CAR)

[email protected](link sends e-mail)

@RaimondoChiari