[Imc-africa] Preliminary thoughts on IMC convergence and WSF

[John Bwakali]

Dear Comrades,
  Greetings from Nairobi! It has been a very hectic but fruitful three weeks full of lessons, great experiences and a few bad ones too. During this time, friendships have been nurtured, experiences shared, cultures exchanged, Kenya explored and many more! People got to sample our Kenyan food which inludes ugali (sadza in Zimbabwe and Pap in South Africa), pilau, chapati and lots more was sampled by comrades at the Karen house and at Maseno. But since all things must come to an end, we will be bidding farewell to the last team to leave on monday. This team comprises of Hannah, Josh, Andy, JJ and Elena. But I believe that the end of one chapter is always the beginning of another one, so the action continues!
   
  I know that by now, you must have heard a lot about the World Social Forum. I will not go too much into that as I am also writing an article about it and it will contain much more information and perspectives. I will however touch briefly on the Indymedia convergence, pending more detailed reports in the coming weeks.
   
  The convergence enabled IMC Kenya to interact a lot with Koch FM, Proactive Youth Group in Kangemi, Ukoo Fulani Mau Mau music and arts gourp, Maseno university and local community, plust a few others. We will continue to nurture consistent partnerships locally and treat IMC Kenya as an inclusive platform upon which diverse independent media producers and implementers can interact towards common goals. We will also treat information generated and disseminated through this interaction as a means and not an end. A means of realising social change and holistically empowering our communities. 
   
  This evening, some members of IMC Kenya will be meeting with Tatarana from Brasil for further talks on South to South IMCs collaboration. Similar talks were also held with IMC comrades from Venezuela and of course Zimbabwe, South Africa and Uganda.We are especially keen in concrete bilateral linkages that can then serve as cornserstones of more regional and global collaboration. 
   
  There has been a lot of talk about internet problems in Kenya and elswhere in Africa. We are therefore thrilled that for us here in Kenya, both Koch FM and the Maseno radio station will greatly enhance communication in this communities. We are also planning to have these radio stations sharing programmes on a regular basis. This will widen the audience while maintaining the local onwership and angle. In addition, we are already exploring the possibility of implenting a strategy generally similar to the thoughts that dunk shared in his emal a few days ago.
   
  We will be sharing with you more thoughts and reports from the convergence and forum in the coming days.
   
  Best regards,
  John

 
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