“I thought my life was over. I couldn’t believe this was what my life had become.”

The NYC branch of SalaamGarage, a team of photographers, videographers and journalists dedicated to bringing forth positive social change, has spent the better part of a year documenting the lives of those who have graduated the foster care system at 21 ill-prepared for what lies ahead. Headed by SG founder Amanda Koster, and led by SG Local NYC Maggie Soladay and team, the group aims to raise public awareness for their cause, and has launched a Kickstarter campaign to complete funding for a book an exhibition for the project “Aging-Out of Foster Care.”

The book, titled “Everybody Needs Somebody” is a compilation of 15 stories and photographs of those who have aged out of the system. The exhibition will take place at The Long Island Children’s Museum from June 16th, 2012 – September 2nd, 2012.

For more information on the Kickstarter project, or to make a donation, click here.
To read more on SalaamGarage Local NYC and the beginnings of the “Aging-Out of Foster Care” project, click here.

Ethiopian Midwives Documentary on SocialDocumentary.net

In November, 2010 I headed to Ethiopia to begin a photo documentary about midwives as a sustainable source of reproductive health care. Ethiopia has some of highest maternal and infant death rates in the world. On average, 670 mothers will die from birth for every 100,000. Women often face serious birth injuries, including obstetric fistula, which leaves women incontinent and in public shame.
To promote sustainable reproductive health care, The Hamlin Fistula Hospital has combined forces with the Ethiopian government and now running the Hamlin College of Midwifery.

Each Year, representatives from the college head out to high schools to speak about the program and recruit new students. After an applicants grades are checked, they must pass an exam to be admitted into the college.  Completely free, recruited students attend the college from all over Ethiopia, living in dormitories on campus, then returning to the regions they are from to work as midwives. After 4 years of school, students graduate with a minimum of 40 live births.

Due to a combination of cultural/religious influence and poor access to health care or clinics, 95% of births happen at home without a trained birth attendant and often without running water or electricity. An unassisted birth is very dangerous. Often complications cause the average birth to last five days, greatly increasing the chance for birth injuries and the death of the baby, mother or both.
The college just graduated its first class of 11 midwives in October of 2010, only weeks before we arrived there.  The program has built clinics and dormitories for the graduated midwives in remote areas to help make reproductive health care more accessible to the rural population. The midwives provide education, family planning and health care to expecting mothers.

By Jonathan Hanson, SalaamGarage Ethiopia 2010 Participant

The Hamlin College of Midwifery needs your help!
Medical supplies and financial donations are need to help support the operation of rural health clinics where midwives are currently working.
Hamlin Fistula Hospital and Hamlin Midwifery College Needs:
$3000 for 1 Student for 1 year at the Midwifery College
$8 buys a blanket for a new patient, 20 are needed
$2 buys plastic slippers for patients without shoes, 300 are needed
$4.50 buys a nurse uniform, 20 new uniforms are needed

The USA Hamlin Fistula Fund is being setup right now. Until it is up and running please use this page for your donations:
Hamlin Fistula Make a Donation

See the full story by Jonathan Hanson at SocialDocumentary.net
More of Jonathan’s work at: JonathanHansonPhotography.com
his Blog: 52FreshPhoto.com

From LIVESTRONG to charity:water, the best nonprofits let their supporters become part of their story. But while lots of new nonprofits are great at fieldwork, few have the tech or tale-telling abilities to instantly grab their audience’s attention.

CauseVox creates custom public support and online fundraising pages that are beautiful and simple. Nonprofits can keep their own branding and design, seamlessly integrating CauseVox into their own main site and identity. The pages even allow supporters to weave their own story into the mix, personalizing their connection to the causes they love – kinda like the Tumblr of online fundraising. The best part: its easy-to-use platform is made specifically for non-techies, giving customers more time to do what they do best – changing the world.

CauseVox is offering 6 months of free services for TBD readers and friends – just sign up for notification of the public launch (which is set for January 24th — get to it before then!) and enter code “TBD.” Social good just got a lot more user-friendly.

The Glimpse Correspondents program, run by Matador and supported, in part, by National Geographic, supports travel writers and photographers by awarding a cash stipend and editorial guidance for their work. Glimpse also provides an online platform for expanding the Correspondents’ audience.

Glimpse editor-in-chief, Sarah Menkedick, said more than 700 applications were received for the Fall 2010 Correspondents program, and she expects many more for the Spring 2011 cycle, as Matador has decided to lift the age limit. Formerly capped at 36, anyone over 18 can now apply for the Correspondents program.

The deadline for applications is November 28, 2010. You can learn more about the program and submit your application materials on the Glimpse site.

Community Connection: One way to get an idea of what we’re looking for when we review applications is by reading current Correspondents’ stories and viewing their work. Visit the Glimpse site to see both.

From Glimpse: The Glimpse Correspondents Program is for talented writers and photographers with a passion for storytelling and a knack for finding truly unique stories. The program is open to anyone who will be working, volunteering, or studying outside of their home country for at least 10 weeks. Correspondents receive the following benefits:
* $600 stipend
* Support from a team of professional editors
* Career training in writing and photography
* Guaranteed publication on Glimpse.org and Matador Network

Tip: To get helpful tips on what Glimpse looks for in an application, become a Glimpse Facebook fan.

In addition to the general Correspondents Program, Glimpse is also offering a specialized position in Spring 2011: the Glimpse/HTH Worldwide Health Correspondent. To learn more, click here.

This is a great week. Blurb and SalaamGarage began an official partnership. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Blurb, the company has revolutionized the way people can self-publish books of their work be it photographs, illustrations, words, etc.

Let me back up. Our India09 travelers self published a book “India as witnessed by 10 citizen journalists” using Blurb.  They rounded up photos and some very powerful personal stories, got it together and published a book!  Proceeds from the book will support the work of Vatsalya, the SalaamGarage NGO partner in India.

From there, we realized Blurb would make a great partner. Our participants always produce amazing content, and the content is ultimately for the greater good: inspiring stories of social entrepreneurs around the world. Each story is more compelling than the next.

What company doesn’t want to be associated with powerful content and inspiring stories? None.

So, through a few contacts and a Facebook call-out borne was an e-intro between myself and Blurb. From there, Blurb and I talked about what made sense for both of our organizations and a partnership was born.  And this is a really sweet relationship, here is the gist of it:

All SalaamGarage travelers will receive a coupon for a free book of their own content created on their SalaamGarage trip. The coupon is roughly the cost of a standard landscape hardcover book with up to 120 pages. In addition, Blurb will provide another coupon code for 20% off future books. Each participant can use the coupon up to five times!

In addition, for each trip, Blurb will sponsor and contract a Blurb+SalaamGarage specific designer for the creation of a book, combining all participants work. The book will be available through the Blurb bookstore and all proceeds go to the non-profit.

And if that doesn’t excite you enough, Blurb will feature the SalaamGarage project books in their bookstore, and will feature books created by the individual journalists!

And the cherry on top, Blurb will also feature any SalaamGarage book projects on their Facebook and Twitter feeds, and take copies of the books with us when we attend events where it’s appropriate. (They said their CEO was at a TED conference in February, and definitely would have taken one if they’d had it!)

And last, Blurb will also feature the project books and interviews with myself and people who attended the SalaamGarage trips on their blog:http://blog.blurb.com/.

This is awesome to say the least and we are all very excited and grateful.  All of this is included when you travel with SalaamGarage. Seriously, now is the time to jump on. Trips are filling, more partnerships are on the horizon and more press is underway. Shabam.

This new partnership begins with our upcoming Guatemala trip, and we have 2 spots left. Want to get published, work with amazing photographers, have your work featured in the Blurb worldwide ecosystem? I’ve been working as a photographer for 15 years and never found an opportunity like this when building my career and self: rare access to social entrepreneurship, innovative, native projects, amazing fellow travelers, solid mentorship on how to let your work out here, and now, guaranteed way to be published and publicized.

2 spots left for Guatemala, and Ethiopia trip now booking. Are you ready to take the leap and truly make a difference? Join us.

Cheers, Amanda

Buy the BOOK and help Vatsalya:

http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=55297

Photographer Janat Horn and Journalist Daysha Eaton’s Vietnam landmines story published at Vietnamese English Language paper Thanh Nie News.  Congrats you two!

Exerpt:

50-year-old Cuc lives in Dong Ha, just west of Hue. She has called the dusty town of less than twenty thousand people home for most of her life.

She survived the war years unharmed. But about ten years later a remnant of the war changed her life forever.

“It was an afternoon in 1986. I was cleaning the garden with my father. There was a landmine and I was severely injured. I just lay there in the garden for about an hour and then my family took me to hospital.”

It all happened so fast that she doesn’t remember much about the accident, only that people said it was a cluster bomb.

However, she does recall the despair she felt when she woke up in the hospital. “When I woke up the next day, I found out I had lost parts of my body… people were frightened when they saw me. When my family brought my son in, he was one year old then, he was scared and cried and he just wanted to go home. I was downhearted and I didn’t want to go back to my family.”

Unfortunately, Cuc’s story is not uncommon in Quang Tri. Since the war ended in 1975 more than seven thousand people have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance, or UXO, in the province.

Thanks to SalaamGarage partner NGO Peacetrees Vietnam for being so instrumental in clearing Quang Tri Provence of UXO’s.  Please read further this powerful story reported on during January 2010 SalaamGarage Trip to Vietnam here:

http://www.thanhniennews.com/features/?catid=10&newsid=55297

from the original post on her personal blog

passion. commitment. focus. talent. intuition. faith. trust.

many people ask me ‘how do you make your projects happen?’ what people really want to know how on earth i fund them. well, with money of course. but that’s not the real question. anyone can run a credit card. i know several millionaires who are miserable, lost, spent it all, searching, drunk, still working. it doesn’t take money to follow your passion.

it takes having, trusting and following your passion.

that’s the real struggle for most everyone i meet. their initial question ‘how did you/do i fund this’ isn’t the real question. their real question is ‘how do i discover my passion?… how do i know this is my real passion?’ I say if you are asking the question, you are pretty darn close.

at first i charged everything. didn’t dig credit card debt so i discovered grants. i started applying for grants, and was awarded several: The GAP grant, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and The Puffin Foundation, to name a few. i took a fund raising class and learned it’s faster to raise the money myself. i held fundraisers. raised money from my own community who wants to support me. i literally threw parties and made my intentions very clear: ‘this is a fund raising party. I am going to morocco to work on project x, and am looking for financial support. i need to raise x amount of money by x date. this is what i plan to do and this is why it is a good idea.’ then started meeting with universities and now corporations. There are also viral ways to raise money, using the social media tools we are already familiar with. it all works.

amanda working in morocco thanks to her self-taught fundraising skills

its all a collaboration in my eyes, and my work has always been about the greater good. i have found that people want to help. they want to be involved. they too want to get those orphans off the streets in to a legitimate home, put that aids orphan through school, give female, sufi muslim musicians some praise and honor. they just may not know where to start. some people, like me, choose to go to kenya an create these documentaries, these stories. others can help fund it, others can help get it published, get it on tv, in books, on gallery walls, etc. This has all happened for me.

key has been to share the project, and also ask for support. its all a collaboration and once i shared my passion i found they had it too, and were happy to collaborate. then, as if by magic, it all came together. it helps me a lot to be very clear and articulate about my intentions. not only does that help me find support, it helps me pinpoint my vision.

now with SalaamGarage trips people are emailing me asking how to work out the money part.

many of the participants have raised the money on their own, just the way i did. by raising money via blogs, twitter, Facebook, paypal, personal communities, etc., this creates the viral/social media platform and a system of accountability for participants. the people who support them to go on the trip then look forward to seeing results. in turn, this creates goal for the participant to create a project, follow through and share it upon return, which then gets the message of the NGO out there. this also creates a sense of ownership, and also the trip starts when they register vs. when they land in say, Guatemala. helps them pinpoint their vision. (see?)

to break it down it looks like this:

1. discover the passion

2. commit

3. come up with a plan

4. share the passion

5. ask for support

6. get support

7. do the work

8. share the work

9. watch the magic, the whole time.

-Amanda Koster

Center for Investigative Reporting Grants
and
Pulitzer Center Grants

We talk about SalaamGarage team member Daysha Eaton and her grant application with Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and her fundraising efforts here.

Spot.Us is a nonprofit project of the Center for Media Change. Spot.us gets its funding from the Knight Foundation who also fund Printcasting.com, which I write about on this blog. Spot.us is “an open source project, to pioneer ‘community funded reporting.’ Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do investigations on important and perhaps overlooked stories. All donations are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, the donation is reimbursed.”
If the story you post is not purchased with exclusive rights by a news organization then it is the made available to all through a Creative Commons license. Spot.us calls itself “a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate. Choosing Spot.us to tell your story is probably not the first place a SalaamGarage humanitarian citizen journalist should post their stories. Because we believe the stories created with SalaamGarage need to be read by as many people as possible, one would have to create a story specifically aimed at sale for exclusive rights. But I do recommend Spot.us for independent and personal projects in your community. To read more about Spot.us check out this “Lessons in Crowdfunding” article by Spot.us founder DigiDave

Raise the money with a campaign here:
Kickstarter.com is a very fun very clean way to raise funds for your project, story, or idea. The website is full of musicians, photographers, journalists, activists, and some total nuts!

ThePoint.com Easy and Effective Group Action
“Whether you’re raising money, organizing people, or trying to influence change: if you can’t do it alone, you can do it on The Point.”
The great thing about campaigns on The Point and at Kickstarter is that no one is charged for their pledge to your project until the minimum pledge action or financial amount is met or exceded. So people can donate and feel good that their money is going towards the project they are supporting.
Hint: if you are raising funds in different ways like events along with an campaign online keep the Kickstarter or The Point campaign minimum amount lower than your actual ultimate fundraising goal.

Idealist.org run by Action Without Borders
If you take one thing away from Idealist.org, it will likely be that you are not the only one working to cause change in the world.
Action Without Borders runs the website Idealist.org. “Idealist.org is a website that facilitates connections between individuals and institutions that are interested in improving their communities.” This is a great place to build a network around your; cause, community problems, or to find a cause to work for or with. Idealist.org hosts podcasts and a news blog, as well as multiple in-depth forums. I also saw listed about 5,000 jobs, about 18,000 volunteer opportunities, and almost 89,000 organizations listed.

http://www.globalgiving.com/open/

GlobalGiving is an online marketplace that connects people to the causes and countries they care about.
nominate your own project at GlobalGiving
Provide them with details about your organization and your work through the self-recommendation form. If you meet eligibility requirements, you will be invited to participate in an upcoming Open Access Challenge event.

Hold a fundraiser- sell tickets through Eventbrite to look slick and official while keeping track of your benefit’s attendees

Also see the detailed instructions in the previous post “SalaamGarage Funding your Project Guide” where you can learn to create a Sponsor Me page at Facebook and how to start a campaign on WordPress.

-Maggie Soladay
Maggie Soladay | 

GroundReport
GroundReport is “hyperlocal news and opinion from around the world.”

The Ground Report website says: “GroundReport is an world news platform that combines digital reporting tools and a selective human network to power the best global citizen journalism on the web.” From wikipedia: enables anyone to publish news reports and videos and earn a share of ad revenues. With a mission statement to ‘democratize the media,’ GroundReport’s 4,000 international contributors report from the scene of world events to add local, on-the-ground insight to international news. To establish trust, GroundReport uses a Wikipedia-like model of volunteer editors and community feedback, combined with a 5-star rating system. Contributors retain rights to their work, and can choose from a range of Creative Commons licenses. The New York-based company was founded by Rachel Sterne in 2006, inspired by her work reporting on Darfur for the United Nations. Follow GroundReport on Twitter

NowPublic
NowPublic, just acquired by the Examiner.com, is called “an innovative Web site for citizen-generated media” in a NYTimes article announcing the deal by Brian Stelter from Sept 1, 2009. NowPublic’s site says that “by harnessing the wisdom of crowds and tapping into the news creating potential of the hundreds of millions of Internet users, bloggers and photography enthusiasts, NowPublic is changing the way news is made and distributed.”

Current
Current.com is the place to find and share stories and videos that are interesting to you. It connects to Current TV, a global cable and satellite TV network. “Current is about what’s going on in your world: all the things you and your friends are actually interested in — that you won’t find on any other news site or cable TV channel.”
Current.com Make TV link How-To produce your current tv show or news program.

Causecast.org
Causecast, dubbed “a one stop philanthropy shop” by TechCrunch, is a platform where media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.
People want to do good, want to be inspired, and want to inspire others to join them in giving back. Causecast makes this easy by providing users with means to CONNECT with people, leaders, charities, nonprofit organizations, and brands that inspire them. Follow CauseCast on Twitter.

OhMyNews International -OhMyNews is a Korea based news organization made up entirely of citizen journalists reporting on news and issues around the world.

The Glimpse.com allows you to share your story if you are living or have lived oversees.
The Glimpse.com CORRESPONDENTS PROGRAM
is supported by National Geographic. Once accepted,Glimpse corespondent’s receive a stipend and support to tell their story. Any skilled photographer or writer can qualify if they are going to be in a place; working, studying or traveling for at least 10 weeks, are between the ages of 18-34, and have an original story to tell.

-Maggie Soladay

follow us on Twitter! @SalaamGarage @MaggieSoladay

Princasting’s website declares: “Printcasting™ is a new local media ecosystem that lets everyone share in the work, and the rewards.” Miller explains that the way Printcasting works is; “Would-be publishers choose a name and template for their paper on the Printcasting Web site. Then they can fill it with articles they have uploaded to the site or search topic feeds, like food or travel, to find articles that others bloggers or newspapers have uploaded.”
Printcasting was started by Dan Pacheco of the The Bakersfield Californian, a local newspaper for all residents of Bakersfield, CA. The first Printcasting magazines were edited by Bakersfield locals and stories RSS fed from Bakotopia.com. While Printcasting’s focus was originally just on the 330,000 residents of Bakersfield. Now, says Dan Pacheco, “anyone can now use the site to create an automatically updating, printable PDF magazine.” The reason is thanks to the grant they received from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation via the Knight News Challenge. In the NYTimes story Claire Cain Miller reports that the “$837,000 grant from the Knight Foundation’s program to find digital models for local news, hopes to attract new readers and advertisers to print publications.”

The Bakersfield Californian is charging premium print rates for ads.
In a Business Week story The Online Experiments That Could Help Newspapers By Olga Kharif, Kharif reports that the magazine’s audience is young, hip, and hard to reach. Quoting Dan Pacheco “advertisers do pay full rates, the magazine even turns a profit.” She goes on to quote Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute who said; “newspapers had hoped that their Web sites would help them replace evaporating print revenue. But an online ad typically garners one-tenth of the revenue of a print ad.”

Despite evidence around the country of failing newsrooms and struggling journalists it seems this model could work. On the Digital Nirvana blog Adam Dewitz notes that “Pacheco said that early experiments in digital-print hybrid magazines in Bakersfield, such as Bakotopia.com and Bakotopia Magazine, show that there is money to be made in niche publications.”

Two Page VIews of a sample Printcasting Magazine’s page:

On this page visitors can: advertise in the next issue, contact the publisher, view previous editions, and subscribe to the magazine.

How To:
As a contributor you register your content, you make your words and pictures available for inclusion in other Printcasts on the site. And, if a magazine attracts advertising, you will receive a share of that revenue.
RSS feed off your blog is the easiest way to feed material to Printcasting.

Here is a link to turn the pages of a virtual copy of the Printcasting magazine.

Stay up on the latest from Printcasting
follow Printcasting on Twitter
Pachecod on Twitter Dan Pacheco is a product manager and former journalist who uses (and sometimes builds) social tools for public good.

-Maggie Soladay

Start a Blog. Blogs can be linear and journal-like or they can act like a webpage for a single subject. You are reading a blog right now. But, it is also SalaamGarage’s website with static pages just like a website.
Blog:
WikiHow: How to start a Blog

Top 3 Blog sites:
WordPress
Blogger
Typepad

For WordPress templates: more customizing options than the available template on WordPress
GraphPaperPress

or use one of these super clean and easy Website and Blog platforms:
Posterous
Websites at Google
Weebly
Webnode
DotEasy

Website Magazine:
OpenZine: Its a free website that looks like a web magazine

PLEASE add your own ideas and resources in the comments below!

-Maggie Soladay

New! turn your blog into a print magazine, be a publisher and pull from other writers in your genre, and get paid advertising dollars doing it! PrintCasting.com- Check it out

Blue Earth Alliance

Collective Lens: “promotes social change with your photos. Upload a photo and help bring awareness to important issues around the world. You can inspire others to become involved.”

FeatureShoot

FiftyCrows: They get social documentary work out there. Distributing it in new and original ways to build awareness, start conversations, and provide networking and financial support to help documentary photographers cause social change.

Fotovision: Their “mission is to advance documentary photography and storytelling. … through education, dialogue and community. … to inspire and enable positive change by creating a global photographic community that gives voice to the human condition.” They teach workshops in San Francisco Bay Area.
Photocrati.com: Sponsors of the Photocrati Fund, a nonprofit that provides grants to photographers working on important environmental and humanitarian projects. Also a online community for photographers

socialdocumentary.net

The Digital Journalist: Online journalism. Photographers are writers and photographers. Reporting from around the world.

-Maggie Soladay