This is an archive of the Dadamac.net website, as it was in 2015, it is no longer being updated.
Nafsi Acrobats - visibility
The Nafsi Acrobats are based in Nairobi. As well as performing they do great work with deprived children. It might help them to use www.dadamac,net to tell their ongoing story - similar to the way Fantsuam Foundation does.
The initiators
Kennedy Owino of the Naafsi Acrobats and Pamela McLean of Dadamac decided to see how it would work to use dadamac.net to raise the visibility of Nafsi Acrobats
The backstory
Ken and I (Pamela) have known each other for many years online and face-to-face. - initially through Andirus Kulikasukas and Minciu Sodas. We have encouraged and supported each other in various way, and learned a lot together. I also know some of the other acrobats, including Njunge James, from when we all met in Lithuania through Minciu Sodas.
Ken and I are often in contact via Skype. The idea of experimenting with the dadamac.net space for Nafsi Acrobats is a natural thing for us to do together. We have also been discussing how we can together support Samwel Kongere's work throuogh dadamac.net. That will be more challenting as Sam is 'one step further away". We hope that what we learn through increasing Nafsi Acrobat's visibility will also help us to do something similar for Samwel, and possibly others.
The catalyst
There was no sudden catalyst, the idea emerged from our Skype chats.
Timeline (published July 2012)
- June 2012 - Kennedy Owino, Njunge James and I exchanged emails about setting up a space on www.dadamac.net and starting a blog sometime in July
- July 2012 - this page was published declaring "Nafsi Acrobats visibility"to be one of dadamac's initiatives
The ongoing story
We shall find out. The first step will be to experiment with a blog.
Collaborators
Ken, James and Pamela
Future vision
To increase the visibility of Nafsi acrobats online.
Update December 2012
Our original plan was to copy the different elements that had worked with John - starting with weekly online team meetings, adn see how that would feed inot a blog. This totally failed to work, as we never managed to establlsh the regular meetings. However, Ken and I continued our usual spasmodic meetings on Skype, exchange of emails, and Facebook contact. We find many areas of shared interest regarding cross-cultural collaboraion, thanks to our long association trhough Minciu Sodas, my trips to Africa, Ken's hospitality towards me in Kenya, his move from Kenya to Denmark, and my opportunity to return his hospitality when he visited London.
Ken has also been a frequent First Thursday participant over the years, since the early days when we held them in the Minciu Sodas chat room. The approach that we've developed for First Thursdays, using etherpads, proved a useful model fro Ken's work with the acrobats. (We use the chat box to chat, and build up a record of the meeting as it progresses in the 'shared document' part of the screeen.)
Ken has adopted the First Thursday way of using etherpads for real time meetings to arrange collaboration between acrobats in Denmark and in Kenya (and I have joined in some of the meetings, especially where people are exploring cultural issues and people's expectations of each other during the Danes forthcoming visit to Kenya). Ken is using Facebook for sharing the ongoing story.
The online visibility for Nafsi acrobats has moved on, although not in the way we originally expected. This experiment is ending now. Ken and I will continue our online ccommunication and learning together.