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Shaona Sen | MYND BLOC "Building Blocks for Creative Minds" | A digital zine of findings and musings (The other one: withshaona.tumblr.com)
PETROU\MAN’s West Africa influenced SS12 line. WOOOOOH… .. .
Nicolas Petrou’s considered details of layering, prints, color and texture do justice to his inspiration of modern age fashion and culturally rich traditional influences.
I especially love the play of the hand prints.
Joyce Bidouzo-Coudray summarizes the collection nicely:
“Using both traditional and modern fabrics that range from hand-dyed tartans to organic cotton and jersey wool as well as microfibers, nylon and metallic leather, the collections offer a modern take on refined classical menswearwith a twist of tribal sophistication.”
PETROU\MAN wear is currently available at: OAK (New York), I.T. (Hong Kong), SHIPS (Japan).
(link via anotherafrica.net)
Invisible Children’s human rights campaign on raising awareness about Joseph Kony’s, the leader of LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), horrible ongoing injustices in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
Incredible storytelling. What does this mean for all the millions who have viewed the campaign video? Praying for peace, spreading more awareness, donating money, getting the LRA themselves? Applying the knowledge gained is most challenging for a viral message so powerful. The pre-awareness is both exciting and quite scary. What will that April 20th, 2012, a month from now, do that the campaign isn’t already doing? The KONY campaign release isn’t superhero armor for youth in N. Uganda, DRC, CAR right now. Time is of the essence. Prayers are with those in the midst of turmoil in the Congo and surrounding areas.
“He is not fighting for any cause, but only to maintain his power.” - On Kony, the #1 most-wanted on International Criminal Court’s list.
Goal: Arresting Joseph Kony
(= Seizing the fear, hurt, wrong he instills in children and families)
The film’s intro and campaign rollout strategy reflect on the power of social media. A grassroots energy set the tempo early in the film: “Because we couldn’t wait for institutions or governments to step in, we did it ourselves” is stated before the installing of the Early Warning Radio Network clip (real time updates on surrounding rebel activity). The infographic from this article that shows Twitter usage per African country came to mind (Uganda didn’t place) while continuing to watch. We saw the power of real time info shared by global “digital activists” during Egypt and Libya’s revolutions. The digital luxury of social media lacks in Uganda so mass communication methods like the EARN is a good solution for spreading news, as long as the control of is in the right hands.
I really hope the campaign is spreading pro-active knowledge (see site for a few programs) within LRA infested areas, just as much as worldwide. Full transparency for those actually in the midst of the civil unrest is crucial, to provide hope and clarity through a time of transition. Especially for the youth, who have been most effected and may not know what better there is, like when Jacob spoke about the favoring of death vs. living at a certain point in his life.
Further in the film, as the movement grew, a highlight was the U.S. government signing off on “the placing of U.S. ‘armed forces’ (in Uganda)”. Obama wrote, “To provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Konty from the battlefield”. And “(This is) not putting Americans in combat” was shared on Maddow’s show after Obama’s policy extension… In other words, keeping death counts as low as possible.
Curious to see Kony’s reaction to his rise in “popularity”. Curious to see how influential this global campaign is when it comes to arresting others on the ICC list and the politics in supporting controversial countries. Curious to see how Invisible Children supports north Ugandan region post-Kony capture. Curious about how and if the 20 ‘culture changers’ and 12 politicians will put an individual spin on the Kony campaigning (Limbaugh, Rihanna, Tebow…).
On a positive note, this campaign is bigger than the LRA, than Kony. It’s about what to do with the empathy within us, for what we care passionately abt. I learned much from this short film. Again, curious, to see what empathic results come out of this campaign. #KONY2012
(video via invisiblechildren.com)
BBH NY x UNICEF x Threadless = Good Shirts
“This time, each t-shirt costs the exact amount as the urgently needed aid item depicted on the shirt. For instance, the cheapest shirt features a foiled mosquito and costs the exact price of three insecticide treated mosquito nets ($18.57), while the most expensive features a cargo plane to transport aid ($300,000).”
100% of cost goes to support the famine and drought relief efforts in the Horn of Africa.
An honest breakdown of the location and process of each donated item is give on Threadless’ site.
EX: “$300,000 is the cost of a charter flight to transport vital aid from the UNICEF supply warehouse in Copenhagen to Nairobi, Kenya. T-shirts illustrated by Christine and Justin Gignac.”
(via creativity-online.com)
(Click on IMG for full scale)
An alerting graphic breakdown of the scale of Africa in relation to other countries worldwide.
Africa is equivalent of Spain, France, Germany, the States, Switzerland, Italy, Eastern EU, India, China, the UK and Japan together in body mass. WOW.
(via Flickr/Gareth Knight)
Rwanda harnesses volcanic gases from depths of Lake Kivu→
“It is the start of a project that could light up the whole of Rwanda for decades, while also reducing the risk of disaster for the two million people living alongside this rare “exploding lake”.
In a world first, the barge is extracting gases that are trapped deep in Lake Kivu’s waters like the fizz in a champagne bottle. Methane, the main constituent of natural gas used for household cooking and heating, is then separated out and piped back to the rugged shore where it fires three large generators.
Within two years, the government hopes to be getting a third of its power from Lake Kivu, and eventually aims to produce so much energy from methane to be able to export it to neighbouring countries.
The seismic activity around the lake is responsible for the steady injection of volcanic gas into the water, where it settles in a dense saline layer more than 260 metres beneath the surface.
To harvest the methane, heavy water is sucked up through a pipe to the barge, where the liquid and gases are separated. The gas then enters a “scrubber” that separates the methane and carbon dioxide. Ebinger said reducing the overall concentration of gas in the water was a positive move, but warned that more studies were urgently needed to assess the potential environmental impact, especially relating to the unused water and carbon dioxide pumped back into Lake Kivu from the barges.”
(via guardian.co.uk)
