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B1G1's monthly donations to Dot Com Mob ensure a significant benefit to Indigenous children living in very remote communities in the Northern Territory in Australia. Many thanks to all those people giving small donations which adds up to real change. https://www.b1g1.com Check out their giving program. Add Comment Many thanks to Transform Communications who rather than sending Christmas cards through the mail this year, sent e-cards to their friends and clients via email, so that they could make a donation of the savings to Dot Com Mob. Many thanks for the generous donation we have just received from Palantir Technologies. What a great start to the year and the money will enable us to buy more laptops to send to youth workers in remote communities. Check out what they do http://www.palantir.com In October 2012 Desert Pea Media came to stay in Alpurrurulam for four weeks creating and recording songs and film clips for a DVD / CD compilation that we will be realeasing as apart of the Binge Drinking Program. It's titled "Binge Thinking not drinking" and features 9 film clips and 12 songs that have created over the duration of the program, some which have been showcased here. This clip is "Children of the Sun" and is a beautiful piece showcasing some of the beautiful country around Alpurrulam and its people.   With the temperature outside soaring past 40 degrees, the youth worker is packing up four of the new laptops donated by Dot Com Mob into a secure travel case. The laptops are off to Alpurrurulam also know as Lake Nash. Lake Nash is one of the most isolated locations in Australia and the laptops will be used to engage the young people in the community in various learning and creative activities. The computers have been networked with each other (independent of the internet) to play Minecraft - which is a type of digital Lego game, but more varied and interesting. In addition, as the laptops are Macs they have creative programs such as Garage Band and iMovie already loaded. The Dot Com Mob, also donated some multi-media keyboards so that the children can enjoy recording their own music. The computers are sent with workers so there is adequate supervision for their use.  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Computer Room in Papunya.  Thanks to generous donations through our fundraising partners, The Sebel Pier One Hotel and B1G1, the Dot Com Mob was able to purchase and donate 8 brand new Apple Mac Pro laptops to three remote Indigenous communities in NT. The Apple laptops come were shipped with multi-media keyboards which will enable to young people in the communities to play and record their own music. The exciting and interesting content and challenges that are possible with computer technology continues to engage many community members. We are looking for donation of second-hand laptops as part of this program. If you have some machines you would like to donate, please contact us for further information. http://youtu.be/folHpHeXwOc A multi-media project created by the children of Wujal Wujal, that featured local language, Kuku Yalanji, was screened publicly last week for the first time. Few would consider rap music an effective tool for practicing traditional Aboriginal language and bringing communities together but that is exactly what it has done in the Wujal Wujal last week. With the support of the charities Dot Com Mob and the ING Foundation, school kids aged 8-12 from Bloomfield River State School, have written, performed and recorded a rap song and accompanying video clip in the local language, Kuku Yalanji. The project’s multi‐media trainer, Wade MacKinnon and the children’s teacher, Jacqui Levy, helped the young kids identify the aspects of their local community that they were the most proud of and developed a rap song that described their life in Wujal Wujal community. This song was then translated into the local language. Norman Tayley, the local language specialist who assisted the kids with the translations, highlights how important the project was for their community, “We have to show our kids how important language is to keep our culture alive, because if the kids aren’t speaking the language then their children won’t be speaking it and it will be lost forever.” The accompanying video clip created by the children and the technical support crew, featured local sacred sites from the Bloomfield area including the Weary Bay beach and the Wujal Wujal Falls. The children also learnt how to make clay figurines of themselves and local wildlife particular to the area, that were animated into the film. Kathleen Walker, Traditional Owner of the Wujal Wujal area, who accompanied the children on the filming trips to the sacred sites, describes her joy at seeing the children perform their rap song, “Hearing kids singing and dancing in language makes me so happy, I was so proud.” The finished rap song and video clip was screened for the entire Wujal Wujal community last Thursday night. Local residents of all ages enjoyed seeing the special parts of their community highlighted in the video and the creativity and expressiveness of the children.  Dot Com Mob has been financially supporting the computer room at Papunya that was established by CAYLUS in March 2009. We are providing funds for Internet access, to employ a local Indigenous staff member and an onsite manager. Our CEO, Mieka White, is volunteering at the computer room for a month to see how the computers are being used and to determine the social impact of the project on the wider community. She will be updating this blog with news from Papunya. Click here for more details about the project. Wujal Wujal is located approximately 30km north of Cape Tribulation and 60km south of Cooktown. Access to the community is via an unsurfaced track road which is only suitable for four wheel drive vehicles due to the gradient of the terrain and the many streams and rivers that make up the Daintree Drainage Basin. During the wet season the road is unpassable. Because of the town’s isolation, the kids are often bored and engaging in anti-social behaviour. A multi-media training program has been implemented using the funds raised by Sebel Pier One and Harbour Rocks Hotels. The aim is to engage the young people of the Wujal Wujal Community to partake in healthy activities that build self-esteem and a sense of belonging and connectedness to their culture. The program not only provides arts activities for children and young people, but it is also linked to professional development and employment opportunities of local Indigenous artists. The participants have been capturing their community’s local stories and developing scripts. Some of the participants have started developing music for the film’s soundtrack. Weather permitting, participants have been filming aspects of community life using a variety of different techniques and equipment types. A short film has been compiled of the footage that was captured in the first few weeks of the training program. The quality of the footage is low but it was an opportunity for the kids to see what they have shot and learn how they may improve on their filming techniques. It will also be used for the school kids, to inspire their imaginations to come up with some more ideas for using the cameras as well as take them onto the next steps of learning how to edit. |
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