JamesCast, the James Piecowye Podcast : A Friend of Nightline needs your Help.

This is very unusual for me, to post a letter from a friend in my BLOG, but I know so many of you are looking for ways to engage with global communities for change.

Read this and please do what you can!

Hi,

My wife Masarat and I are heading next week to Dhaka, Bangladesh and then Fatehpur, Rajasthan to organise two 8-Day Academies in Dhaka and a TEDx conference in a rural town in Rajasthan. Here is what we will be doing during our trip as described by Masarat.

8-Day Academy [http://www.8dayacademy.org] is my initiative to help rural communities gain necessary and education and skills (in just eight days) that empowers them. So far, these sessions have been conducted in Rajasthan--the most illiterate state in India. Six sessions of 8DA have been completed which has changed the lives of hundreds of people in small villages here. The next two sessions will be in Dhaka, Bangladesh in a slum community where as you can imagine, the condition is very backward. I will be training children and women who will then continue the cycle of 8DA and teach this to more than 600 people.

The next project that I do is TEDx Shekhavati. If you know about TED conferences (www.ted.com), you'll know how inspiring and life-changing the talks at this conference are. I have been a speaker at TEDxDubai 2009 and then went on to organise the first TEDx in rural India called TEDxShekhavati. Shekhavati is the cluster of villages and small towns that I work in. I felt that instead of working with 40-50 people at a time, I need to target the larger community so it was important to bring the values of TED to the village. You can read about the conference and the difficulties I had to face in organising it, here:

http://blog.ted.com/2010/01/tedxshekhavatia.php

More than 1,200 people attended the event and many of them were inspired to create community projects that not only helped themselves but also set a positive example for their communities.

On February 5, 2011 I am organising a second edition of this conference. This time, there will be two conferences (2-3 hours each) on one day. One will be for grown-ups and the other will be for children. The issues that both these categories deal with are quite different.

I am fundraising to organise this conference because it's very hard for me to get corporate sponsors for an event like this. Nobody wants to advertise in a village and usually if they do, they prefer to tamper with my speaker list, often adding people from their own company who don't necessarily have a story to tell. This TEDx has become a source for people to learn about new things and show them how they can be better people. You can contribute for the two events on our 8-Day Academy webiste: http://www.8dayacademy.org/fundraising

If you have friends or family who are willing to contribute money to help me organising TEDx and my 8-Day Academy, that would be great. In totality, for both events, I'm looking to squeeze it in AED20000. Of course, you don't have to cover the whole amount! One of the biggest cost is the venue setup for the TEDx--because there are no auditoriums or halls in the village, we construct a tent from scratch and use special projectors so that a large 1000+ audience can view it properly.

Additional videos and links for you:

Impact of TEDxShekhavati: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U26fwIkuGTs

My TEDxShekhavati talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBKkva3Y_ew&feature=related

Info video about 8-Day Academy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OzlBLIzJ9U&feature=related

Intro video of 8-Day Academy (text, photos and background music): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nludz7SgUpU&feature=related

Article in The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/03/india-religion

Another interview:

http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201010/2192413901.html

Any help would be appreciated. Please let me know if you need additional info.

Regards,

Masarat Daud
CHIEF ACTIONISTA
8-DAY ACADEMY