Here at Enough, we often swap emails with interesting articles and feature stories that we come across in our favorite publications and on our favorite websites. We wanted to share some of these stories with you as part of our effort to keep you up to date on what you need to know in the world of anti-genocide and crimes against humanity work.
The Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra and Choir in Congo’s capital of Kinshasa has been frequently featured in the media and in photo essays. Now they’re about to debut at the Berlin Film Festival in the documentary “Kinshasa Symphony” by Claus Wischmann and Martin Baer. From the looks of the trailer, it’s going to be a heartwarming story. (Hat tip: Africa Is A Country)
To mark the start of the 2010 TED conference this week, the social media blog Mashable featured five standout TED talks from years past. At Enough we constantly look for new ways to shorten the space between the people on the ground in the conflict zones where we work and the U.S. advocates who are dedicated to keeping stories in front of influentials. Writer and professor Clay Shirky’s talk about how social media can make history by empowering citizen journalists is especially relevant – one can easily imagine how the same tools used to report instantly about the 2008 earthquake in China, for instance, could prove powerful during Sudan’s upcoming elections.
Public Radio International ran this short piece by Katy Clark on how the challenges in Haiti have caused aid organizations to necessarily redirect attention away from other crisis zones, at least temporarily. Particularly in tough economic times, the give and take is inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any less unfortunate for places like Somalia.
In this Letter from Congo, the Washington Post’s Stephanie McCrummen describes an unmistakable feature of any eastern Congo cityscape: the wooden, manpowered chukudu scooter that “hauls vegetables in the good times and fleeing people in the bad.
On a related note (though I’m fudging the date because this is funny and timely, given the ICC’s recent prominence in the news), this clip from the Christian Science Monitor’s Scott Baldauf describes a new trend in Kenyan matatu décor. Whose face now adorns the back windows of minivan taxis, a place previously reserved for Barack Obama, American hip hop stars, and statements praising God? Here’s a hint: He’s everyone’s favorite ICC prosecutor.