Welcome

Hello everyone,

I really hope this blog will be used to keep everyone together. i hope you have all had a good few months since the conference. let us know how you are doing and what you are doing. keep in touch and go well,
Bill

Darfur

I wanted to let everyone know about an interesting project from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Google Earth to help bring the crisis in Darfur to light. Google Earth is a program you can download for free at http://earth.google.com/ that uses all sorts of satellite imagery to show real images of almost any place on the planet, and they worked with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on the Genocide Prevention Mapping Project to create a way of 'seeing' what's going on in Darfur. There is a ton of information- interviews, videos, photos and information about how to help. This is some information from the USHMM website:

'The Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative seeks to collect, share and visually present to the world critical information on emerging crises that may lead to genocide or related crimes against humanity.

Beginning with Darfur, we are building an interactive “global crisis map" that will provide citizens, aid workers and foreign policy professionals with a new tool to share and understand information quickly, to "see the situation", enabling more effective prevention and response.'



The website is here: http://www.ushmm.org/googleearth/projects/darfur/ . I think this is an amazing project, and an amazing use of technology.

Hope everyone is doing well,
Lesley.

On March 11th, 2007, when Morgan was attempting to join a payer session of young people he was arrested and jailed.

In January the Founders of International Youth Leadership African had a special opportunity to hear from Zimbabwean opposition leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai during the first conference. After hearing him speak, Tsvangirai and Roy Bennett, MDC treasurer, joined IYLA participants on a site visit to Robben Island where many had the opportunity to speak with the MDC leader in person. This was a very inspirational trip for us all. Since then Mrogan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change have been in the headlines.

On March 11^th, 2007, when Morgan was attempting to join a payer session of young people he was arrested and jailed. On behalf of the IYLA and Civic Concepts International we want to wish Morgan Tsvangirai all the best and that he and the Zimbabwean people will remain in our thoughts.

We would like to use this blog to keep the IYLA alumni together and as a way to share thoughts & feeling on current African issues.

The opening topic will be on Zimbabwe and Morgan Tsvangirai. Please feel free to contribute any personal comments or even comments that are unrelated. This is the IYLA founders blog lets stay together.