Global Lives Update - Malawi, Dubrovnik, Tokyo, $7.5K challenge & more!

Global Lives Project News - July 2007 (Covering April, May & June)

Highlights: * Malawi shoot successfully completed, post-production under way!! * Global Lives goes to Dubrovnik, Croatia for the iSummit 2007 * $7,500 challenge grant from Black Rock Arts Foundation, send in your match now! * United Nations University and Temple University in Tokyo to produce Japan shoot * Foundations laid in Second Life for Global Lives installation on Amo Island * DotSub.com strategic partnership, NetSquared Conference, website dev and more...

Zomba Plateau, Malawi: The GLP Malawi shoot is complete! On June 8, Edith Kapuka, age 13, officially became our third Global Lives subject. Congratualations to Jason Price, Ya-Hsuan Huang, Jessie Levandov, Harrison Topp, Villant Ndasowa, Allan Ntata, Peter Mazunda, Single Matawale and Erasto Chanza for a job well done! Post-production is now underway in New York at NYU's media facilities and via DotSub (see below) in Blayntre, Malawi. Check out these photos from the shoot.

Dubrovnik, Croatia: David Harris received a scholarship to represent GLP at the iCommons iSummit 2007, where he gave a 15-minute keynote presentation to an audience of 300 of the world's most free-thinking programmers, artists, lawyers and creative professionals. Attending the event were Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales, Stanford University Law Professor and Creative Commons Founder, Lawrence Lessig, representatives of MIT's highly successful "One Laptop per Child" initiative, as well as hundreds of other inspiring free culture zealots from more than 50 countries. The conference brought GLP dozens of new friends and supporters from around the world.

San Francisco: The Black Rock Arts Foundation has awarded GLP a challenge grant of USD 7,500! If we can raise the matching funds in the next three months, this very important infusion of $15K will allow us to finance three shoots and invest in additional fundraising work. Thanks to just three very generous donors from São Paulo, London and Chicago, we've already raised $3,000 towards the match. If just 45 people submit additional donations for $100, we'll hit our target. Donate online now or see below for mailing info. Thanks to Gustavo Cerveira, Cindy Houng, David Spielfogel, Theresa Williamson, Jean Russell and Michael Naimark for help with the application!

Tokyo: The United Nations University Media Studio and Temple University, Japan have teamed up to produce the GLP Japan shoot, scheduled for later this month! Helio Ishii, one of the Directors of the Brazil shoot, is traveling to Japan this month to co-direct the shoot with Irene Herrera of TUJ and Andreina Lairet of UNU. See photos of the production team in action and the official announcement on the UNU website. Thanks to Yumi Garcia dos Santos, Ron Carr, Samson Yee, Wakako Iguchi, Nobuhiro Awata, Kiyomi Nakai, Mariko Nagaba, Chieko Kato, and Mike Olsen for getting this off the ground so quickly!

San Jose, California: Ana Nassar from the Museum of the Person in Sao Paulo attended the second annual NetSquared Conference, a three-day event hosted by Cisco Systems and sponsored by numerous high-tech companies. Ana represented both the Museum and GLP, learning about ways that organizations around the world are using the web for social change. Thanks to Cindy and Larry Harris for hosting Ana as well as Omidyar.net friends Haney Armstrong, Lars Torres, Jean Russell, Evonne Heyning and Julie Caldwell for welcoming Ana to the USA. Thanks also to all those who voted for GLP to participate--though we didn't make the top 20 vote-getters list, Ana received a fee waiver to participate, the Museum covered her flight, and as such we were able to benefit and learn from the event.

Amo Island, Second Life: Evonne Heyning, a friend of GLP from Omidyar.net, has laid the foundations for what may be our first installation--in Second Life! Evonne is the Creative Director of Amoration Studios, as well as the creator of Camp Darfur in SL. At present, Evonne has installed a dome showing our three most recent videos, which can be visited by clicking here after installing SL. Thanks, Evonne!

New York: DotSub.com, a path-breaking new collaborative subtitling website, has entered into a strategic partnership with GLP to integrate their video translation tools into the GLP website at no cost. Michael Smolens, DotSub's ebullient CEO, was also the connection that led to GLP being invited to Dubrovnik. Welcome aboard, Michael!

Warsaw, Poland: GLP was featured this week on Polish Public Radio in a show by Alek Tarkowski of Creative Commons Poland.

Sao Paulo - Fundraising: We continue to march onwards in the quest to become a non-profit entity in Brazil in order to raise funds under Brazilian tax-incentive laws. Thank you to Berenice Ring for donating USD 500 to cover the administrative expenses involved in the process and to Rafaella Costa for driving the paperwork forward!

Sao Paulo - Post-Production: The Sao Paulo five-minute summary video from the Brazil shoot was completed after a herculean effort by Helio Ishii, Jarbas Viana, Ligia Romão, Erick Mammoccio and Camila Ogawa! Thank you! The video will be subtitled and available online shortly.

Website development: Newber Machado embedded a video player on our flash homepage to showcase our 3-minute promo video, and we've been discussing the next stage of website development in this thread. Serious work on this will begin in September, with the launching of a new Drupal enginge (probably), incorporation of the Google Maps & DotSub APIs, and the creation of a GL-specific user community with a discussion board & wiki. Arthur Hebert, Bjorn Wijens and Tomer Altman have already agreed to participate in the process, if you're interested, get in touch via the aforementioned thread!

New Delhi, India: Our best wishes go out to GLP India Director, Priyani Roychoudhury, as she takes care of a family illness in Calcutta. The GLP India shoot has been postponed for this reason. Stay tuned for updates.

Sulawesi, Indonesia: The Indonesia shoot is tentatively scheduled for January, 2008. More info coming soon.

San Francisco: As of June 25, 2007, GLP has switched fiscal sponsors and is now represented by the Film Arts Foundation. Our own 501c3 non-profit status is in the final stage of approval, which likely means another 3-4 months.

- - -

Donate to the Global Lives Project and help us meet our $7,500 challenge ASAP!

We accept tax deductible donations* through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, the Film Arts Foundation, Tax ID # 94-2348632. Donations by check should be made out to "Film Arts Foundation/Global Lives Project" and mailed to Film Arts Foundation, Attn: Fiscally Sponsored Projects, 145 Ninth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103.

You can also donate online: http://www.globallives.org/donate/

*Donations are tax-deductible in the US only, though international donations can be received online via credit card.