Youth+Participation+in+Haiti+-+New+Ways+of+Sharing,+Organizing+and+Engaging

code This month’s Department of Play Community Working Group discussion will be Youth Participation in Haiti: New Ways of Sharing, Organizing and Engaging.

Representatives from Youth Build International and Haitian Coalition of Somerville will speak about working directly with youth and young adults in Haiti. •	How does your organization attract, engage and mobilize youth in communities in crisis? •	What role might technology play in engagement efforts- technology being broadly defined to include texting, cell phones, radio, web, GPS, etc.

Please join us Monday January 24th at 6pm in Room 240 of the Media Lab Building E14: []. Food will be provided.

The Department of Play focuses on appropriate technologies and methods to foster youth participation, social inclusion, and local civic engagement. Learn more about us at: [|www.departmentofplay.org].

YouthBuild International is proud to announce the launch of YouthBuild IDEJEN Rebuilding Academy, a major initiative in partnership with a highly respected Haitian non-profit, IDEJEN. Together we will mobilize 9,000 Haitian young people over the next five years to play a leading role in rebuilding their earthquake-devastated nation. Young people will work and be trained at 12 centers located in urban and rural locations across Haiti. This project builds on a four year partnership between YouthBuild International and IDEJEN, in which Haitian youth learned construction skills and built community centers and sanitation blocks at four sites in response to the hurricanes that struck Haiti in 2005.

Haitian Coalition of Somerville: Members of the Haitian Coalition of Somerville have made a number of visits to Haiti since the devastating earthquake. They have spent most of their time in the camps in Port- Au Prince. The camps range in population from a few hundred to 2,000. Most people in the camps are under 40 – with many children and youths. Small grassroots NGO’s like the Haitian Coalition have had a strong presence in the camps. The Haitian Coalition is starting up a program on “empowerment training”—to teach computer skills to kids in the camps. They have about 25-40 computers and want to establish a training center (computer lab) in a school that exists today.

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