I’ve always been afraid of two things – bodies of water (in which I cannot see the bottom) and heights. At 7, I was stung by a jellyfish while swimming. That same year, I fell off a rock face and into a crevice of fresh lava rock, gouging and slicing my flesh as I tumbled to the bottom – it felt like I fell for miles. I came to dread swimming and climbing things.

Over 20 years later, I found myself miles in the air flying across the world’s largest body of water. All to work for a small organization called CuriousWorks. I’d not heard of them until just a few weeks earlier and in a few days, I was going to be helping them make media with kids in the middle of the Pilbara – a place few Australians (let alone Americans like me) ever get the chance to see.

With just a single Tweet as the trigger, I was going to be over 10,000 miles away from home, in the middle of a vast desert, in a country I’d never been to…

I dove in.

Some mornings, I had magnificent dreams and awoke to watch the sun rise over the desert landscape.

Other mornings gave me a taste of the complex realities of kids in rural and remote communities.

And this was only the first 5 days of my trip…

My second week in Australia found me in the small mining town of Newman, Western Australia. Newman consists of about 5,000 people with an extra 2,000 as ‘fly in fly out‘). It sits about 1200 km north of Perth in the heart of the Pilbara Desert. Because of it’s remote location, food and water need to be shipped in to Newman’s only grocery store weekly. Pilbara literally, means ‘dry‘.

There’s a cultural thirst here too – particularly for the young people of Newman. Pop cultural artifacts like StarWars, Twilight and Subway sandwiches are lapped up. The kids constantly talk about wanting to see ‘bands in Perth’. In deed, many young people – Newman’s potential future leaders – end up leaving.

Because of this, BHP Billiton recognized the need for a more sustainable and permanent infrastructure – something for the long term. That’s where CuriousWorks came in.

As part of the BHP Iron Ore Legacy Project and in partnership with Country Arts WA, CuriousWorks helped Newman’s kids develop a wide range of skills they could put back in to their community. Some of these skills were gained interviewing locals outside of school. Other skills were nurtured by developing a class website. Our final part of the project was putting on Newman’s first film festival.

In starting the project, Senior Advisor of Sustainability and Community Relations for BHP Billiton, Scott Bird said:

“We really want to contribute something significant to the town that demonstrates BHP Billiton Iron Ore’s commitment to creating liveable communities that people want to participate in for the long term. We expect this project will create a lasting impact on both the community members and the landscape of the Newman Township.”

Over the next 12 weeks, we worked with teachers, students and parents to build the media capacity of Newman’s young residents. We moved between 5 different locations to conduct our after school media-making workshops while teaching new media classes in the primary and senior high schools. It was hectic, but a lot of fun and the kids we worked with were very productive.

The project accomplished some great things with and for the young people of Newman:

• our kids got on national television and a national newspaper
• our kids launched a student website with an accompanying lobbying website and youth blog
• we also learned 33 other things…

And yes, we felt happy to call them ‘our kids’. They are awesome.

While we accomplished a lot while there, we were not without our challenges. For one, we were outsiders, not just geographically, but culturally too; a Sri Lankan, a Lebanesian, a snow white Australian with a slight British accent and an Asian-American made for some curious workers in a predominantly white town. There were even a few incidents where I wondered if I’d been discriminated against because of my ‘outsider’ ness. In a conversation I had with a local school teacher, she offhandedly referred to the film production, internet literacy development, and photography we were doing with the kids as not ‘real’ teaching.

Coming into Newman, we also expected to have a stable teaching space to meet with the youth. We had anything but. Not only did the local youth center close down a week before we arrived, but the places we’d hoped to conduct our media workshops were unreliable, in spite of the dedicated efforts of our staff and our Newman partners. The recently closed youth center hadn’t even been open a year. Where were after school programs for youth going to be held? Where were the creative spaces kids could go to continue their learning, playing and making when the schools closed? Who would lead this?

Clearly, there was and is a lot of work to do. I wouldn’t say the kids we worked with were disadvantaged in the sense that Americans (like my self) normally think – poverty, homelessness, language barriers. I’d say their greatest disadvantage is the lack of a stable, supportive center that fosters the creative skills they already have.

As of this writing, there is still no youth space for the kids of Newman to meet and make media. This is the task ahead for the teachers, residents and businesses of Newman – to grow and build on the things we developed with Newman’s youth. To stay true to our intentions as CuriousWorkers, we need to ensure the communities we work with can serve themselves.

Newman certainly deserves to.

I once had a mentor tell me that when working to empower people, all you can really do is ‘hold the crown out in front of them’ – it’s up to them to step up into that crown and claim it.

We’ve been in Newman for nearly 12 weeks now working to help local kids make media, videos and websites, as well as fundraise, run a film night and even get mentions in both print and on national television!

On our last ‘workday’ with them we did a nice review of everything they’d learned. At this point, without any youth center or community technology space to call their own – it’s up to Newman’s youth to determine their future as the town’s central media makers. Our hope is that they’ll be able build on the skills and creativity they’ve developed these past 12 weeks.

That said, here’s a blog ‘toast’ to the 33 things the youth of Newman can do…so far.

1. Act
2. Be Resourceful
3. Blog
4. Build Ad Hoc Computer Labs
5. Build Websites
6. Collaborate
7. Conceptualize and Design Palmtop Computers
8. Create Live Electronic Music
9. Develop Ideas for Films
10. Direct
11. Edit Video
12. Generate Ideas for Youth Spaces
13. Get Furniture Donations for Youth Spaces
14. Hold and Record Youth Forums
15. Learn About DJing
16. Learn From Each Other
17. Lobby Online
18. Market Events
19. Model
20. Petition for the Youth of Newman
21. Produce
22. Set Up Facebook Pages
23. Set Up Video for Events
24. Share Media Together
25. Shoot Video
26. Storyboard Movies
27. Take Notes
28. Teach Each Other About DJing
29. Teach Each Other
30. Teach Teachers
31. Twitter
32. Upload Pictures To Share with the World
33. Work Alone

Today was a blast.  I got to sit in on a session with Elias at the local community centre where Elias has been teaching during the holiday film week.  I got to have a great overview of a brainstorming session between about 15 kids ranging from 9 – 15 years old.

Today, we covered brainstorming, production schedule (preproduction, production and post production), selecting an topic/idea to film (we settled on a Newman TV variety show) and assigning roles.

The kids had a lot of fun with me asking to say things like:

• dollar
• sausage
• recreation

Dropped R’s = Australian accent.  I think.  But I end up sounding British according to Shakthi:)

Posted via email from Memeshift’s posterous

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> The adventure for this Curious Worker begins. Will be in flight for > the next 8 hours as I fly out to Newman, Australia.
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> Yeehaw!

Posted via email from Memeshift’s posterous