DOL a Changemaker?

DOL submits grant to Ashoka's Changemakers

On August 11th, Dreaming Out Loud submitted a project proposal called “What do We Reflect?: A Community Conversation” to Ashoka’s Changemakers program. The competition — called Strong Communities: Engaging Citizens, Strengthening Place, Inspiring Change — has the aim to identify innovative projects and ideas that engage citizens to steer change and build strong communities.

Our project would take place within the context of Project Dream Green’s school year program with our charter school partners.  In this project we will use the placement of interactive public art to initiate a community dialogue regarding ethics, character development and community-building. Our young people will help to plan, create and place interactive public art in six locations throughout Washington, DC. These six works of public art will be large (approx.4ft X 4ft) plaster castings of the symbols.

Each symbol asks a set of essential questions related to building sustainable, healthy and ethical communities. The public will be encouraged to contribute to a dialog generated by the Adinkra symbols using email messages, photos, drawings and other submissions. In addition, the youth participants will use MiniFlip video-cameras to conduct interviews. Leading the youth will be Intergenerational Leadership Partners consisting of a college intern and a retired professional/teacher.

A panel of independent judges selected by Ashoka or CommunityMatters will select eight finalists from all of the entries submitted in the competition. From among these 8 finalists, the Changemakers’ online community will vote for three winners. In the event of a tie, the tie will be broken by a vote of the independent judges. Any person may sign into and register with Changemakers at: http://www.changemakers.com/en-us to vote.

Following our progress and Click here to read and comment on the project.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 9:23 pm. It is filed under Arts & Design, Culture, Education and tagged with adinkra symbol, art, ashoka, changemaker, community, competition, dc, dialog, Dreaming Out Loud, Education, environment, ethics mirror, fun, miniflip camera, nonprofit, project dream green, public art, social entrepreneur, youth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.