Innovation is important to Echoing Green. Explain how your idea is truly innovative or unique. If appropriate, identify other organizations that are addressing this specific area of need and how your approach is different and why it is potentially more effective

Character Limit: 1200 Characters (including spaces) 

Help Text: It is very likely that there is a wide variety of organizations and entities, from local community organizations to governmental agencies, that delivers services to the constituency/community that you have identified. It is also possible that one or more organizations are focused on the same area of need, either in your community or outside of your community. How is your idea for social change different from the ideas already at work? What is new or different in your approach to this existing problem?

We are taking both lessons and inspiration from the work of others in crafting a new form of alternative media. Bringing together the dissemination of scholarly information of the  Alternate Information Center of Jerusalem alongside the hipster, Real World-style filming of The Invisible Children documentary on the LRA issue in Uganda, we want to empower members of the international communities we publicize to employ hot methods of media in order to present their stories. While most media sources have taken a projection of individual stories, in a sense, speaking for the victims and interpreting their stories. This leads to doubts on the basis of media bias as well as controlled articulation of information. Our goal is to form a network to provide and access media by tapping into local communities and providing a medium for presenting the information as well. Also, our target audience is shifting towards academic institutions as well as religious institutions. While academic institutions are common to recognize media’s value, religious institutions are rarely targeted with un-translated media. In a sense, we’re talking about rough-cut media which has not been too tailored to its audience. While the independent media industry is revolutionizing the way our global community becomes more intimate, there is usually an intermediary between the invisible children of Uganda and the viewers in the
United States. We want to remove that intermediary and empower individuals and communities projected on screen to present themselves and not be presented.

.          Innovation is important to Echoing Green. Explain how your idea is truly innovative or unique. If appropriate, identify other organizations that are addressing this specific area of need and how your approach is different and why it is potentially more effective

Character Limit: 1200 Characters (including spaces) 

Help Text: It is very likely that there is a wide variety of organizations and entities, from local community organizations to governmental agencies, that delivers services to the constituency/community that you have identified. It is also possible that one or more organizations are focused on the same area of need, either in your community or outside of your community. How is your idea for social change different from the ideas already at work? What is new or different in your approach to this existing problem?

We are taking both lessons and inspiration from the work of others in crafting a new form of alternative media. Bringing together the dissemination of scholarly information of the  Alternate Information Center of Jerusalem alongside the hipster, Real World-style filming of The Invisible Children documentary on the LRA issue in Uganda, we want to empower members of the international communities we publicize to employ hot methods of media in order to present their stories. While most media sources have taken a projection of individual stories, in a sense, speaking for the victims and interpreting their stories. This leads to doubts on the basis of media bias as well as controlled articulation of information. Our goal is to form a network to provide and access media by tapping into local communities and providing a medium for presenting the information as well. Also, our target audience is shifting towards academic institutions as well as religious institutions. While academic institutions are common to recognize media’s value, religious institutions are rarely targeted with un-translated media. In a sense, we’re talking about rough-cut media which has not been too tailored to its audience. While the independent media industry is revolutionizing the way our global community becomes more intimate, there is usually an intermediary between the invisible children of Uganda and the viewers in the
United States. We want to remove that intermediary and empower individuals and communities projected on screen to present themselves and not be presented.

the weight has been lifted

I have just emerged from what has become semi-annually, one of the greatest ordeals of my life: Finals week at Hillsdale
College. I am battered, a little bit bruised, but my head remains high…I am hoping to have a chance to write a bit more over the break with my new found freedom so if you were reading before you might start reading again…Let me know what you think of this echoing green app. Even if we don’t get this grant we may try to get the organization going anyway… someone needs to do it…why not us? I am also wondering what kind of ideas you have for making a change in your community, or in the world?

3.          Why have you chosen your specific approach to the addressing the need described above? What is your theory or premise about how to create real and lasting social change that underlies the vision for your organization? Character Limit: 1200 Characters (including spaces) Help Text: What is your thesis or premise on how change occurs relative to the need you have identified? For example, Echoing Green Fellows Eric Adler and Raj Vinnakota created the SEED School based on the following theory regarding changing the approach to educating economically disadvantaged children growing up in Washington, DC: It is unreasonable to expect children to succeed in school when they do not eat three meals a day, get a reasonable amount of sleep at night or maintain a modest standard of hygiene. A boarding school can provide consistent, comprehensive, solutions for the challenges facing many young people. For some children, only a 24-hour a day school program can provide the security and consistency they need to succeed.
 Describe how, based on this theory, your organization will bring about fundamental changes in the way things are done in the social sector? How will you attack the underlying root causes of problems, rather than simply treating the symptoms? How will you reduce needs rather than just meeting them? To continue theSEED School example: An integrated program can accomplish more than services pieced together from the public school system, the welfare system and after-school programs.  The SEED School fills a critical need in Washington, D.C. by providing economically disadvantaged urban children with the necessary educational and social resources to prepare for college and the world beyond.

Our approach is personal. As noted, we see the problem as disconnect between the American populace and the populace and issues of other members of the global community. After interviewing Professor Jo Ellen Fair, author of Africa on Camera: Television News Coverage and Aerial Imaging of Rwandan Refugees, it is prevalent that the American public is desensitized to international human rights issues in light of third-party media coverage. Using Fair’s incite into domestic media coverage along with the innovative aspect of  community brainstorms, we’ve developed a strategy of media production that is authentic, community sponsored, and leads to community development. By empowering communities to frame their issues to the media, we allow the communities to envision their expressions, how they want to be expressed, and what they see as the future of their global image. Not only will we provide community members with media production training and equipment, we will also bring community members into forums to brainstorm directions they see their community heading towards. With a current image and an avenue for future expression of a changed image, our approach provides international incite into the self-proclaimed stories of our global village members, while also developing community within the microcosms of that village.

As specifically as possible, demonstrate the need for your organization. Use statistics and references. Character Limit: 1200 Characters (including spaces)Help Text: Identify the problem that you intend to address and why it is significant. Provide information substantiating that the need exists when possible through the use of statistics or quotes from experts or constituents. Because your response is limited in length, it is acceptable to identify your references without providing the full level of detail (e.g., publisher, volume number, page number) that you would provide in a footnote. It is also acceptable to use abbreviations when identifying your source as long as the source can still be easily recognized by a lay person.

The need here is in the reformatting of the global village. In the 1948 book America and the Cosmic Man, Wyndham Lewis explained how technology impacts cognition and society, the global village has the potential to shift towards extremely negative controlling means. On the other hand, it could create a problem-solving world-wide forum, enabling a new sense of world community. According to Southbound Development Communicators and Publishers, the village’s authors know very little about village life and each other. They claim “In the real world there is more going on than ever before, yet most of us know very little about it and the majority of the world’s citizens have little knowledge or understanding of each other” (Trends in World Communication: On Disempowerment and Self-Empowerment, 2004).  The typical American is ignorant of most human rights violations that occur across the globe. It is the opinion of leading sociologists and economists that the personal philanthropy (non-governmental) of the West is underestimated and underutilized (The Tragedy of American Compassion-Marvin Olasky).  We agree. In our places of education, worship, and association, we have observed, that if the village members of the
United States heard the stories of their fellow members across the globe, they are likely to provide more than just a neighborly cup of sugar.

a voide unheard

In ten segments over the next weeks I will be publishing a grant proposal that myself, and a friend of mine, Eyal Halimisch have recently submitted to the Echoing Green Foundation. Echoing Green is an organization that grants startup capital to social entrepreneurs. I suggest you check it at www.echoinggreen.org and develop your own plan.  I look forward to your criticisms  and comments on our idea on how to improve our world… 

Our aim is to give a human voice to the faceless people experiencing human rights atrocities in highly indebted poor countries. We want to frame media in the first person through the direct proposals of the actors of the issue being addressed. Presenting this new form of media, our academic and religious audience in
America will be the source voice that vividly expresses the story of atrocity and human rights violations from around world.  Our idea was born from the ignorance we observed of world pain and mass media’s inability to personalize and define the actual human rights issues it was covering. To break this veil, this voice must be cutting edge, utilizing all of the technological tools of the 21st century with an understanding of our contemporary American society. Knowledge is power and through cutting edge expression, we will create a wave of empathy amongst the universities and religious institutions of
America that translates into the power to stop the wrongs.  We contrast experiences across the globe, to the excessive lifestyle which surrounds us at home. Many good men stand silent to the hurt of the world not out of greed, but out of ignorance. We resolve to eliminate that ignorance.