This Saturday, April 5th from 5-8 p.m. Globalhood project Global Potential is hosting a unique fundraiser at the Casa Frela Art Gallery (47 W. 119th St. in Harlem). Entrance fee is $50, $30 for students. Guests will be invited to bid on a variety of art donated by local and international artists, while enjoying cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.

All proceeds will benefit Global Potential, a program that empowers low-income, minority youth to create positive change in their own communities and those around the world. Ten at-risk high school students have been chosen to participate in the program this year, which involves providing them with extensive training in a vocation of their choice, as well as mentoring and leadership training. The students will travel to a rural village in the Dominican Republic this summer and apply their newly-acquired skills to aid in the betterment of the community. Upon their return home, the students will use social entrepreneurial models to become catalysts for positive social change in their own communities.

Tickets may be purchased in advance at http://globalhood.org/

I’ve been out of the country for a while which may explain the recent lack of blogging. As it happens, I’m still out of the country and so reading the IHT instead of the New York Times. Thusly, I was not aware of  this article, which I think ran in last Sunday’s New York Times. So, Rem Koolhaas is hoping to build a non-city within a city in Dubai. In the article Nicolai Ouroussoff, which you should read now before continuing, presents the idea that this sort of development might cater to only a small global elite. Really, you think? I’m not condemning the rich for luxuriating rather than attempting to save the world, but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that massive architectural projects such as this are utterly and viciously boring: hypermodern non-places, stripped of any organic of evolutionary structure. For all the pomp and circumstance surrounding such projects–Atlantic Yards , which is located in my back yard comes to mind–they’re really nothing more than an attempted synchronization of suburban planning and urban scale: sterile, lacking anything resembling charm, violent by the fact of their existence. As far as I’m concerned, this sort of remapping of urban space into monadic unity runs entirely contrary to Globalhood’s commitment to engaging difference qua difference: real, deep, difficult and highly necessary. If every street, corridor and arcade is the same as the next, why should I leave my house in the morning?

Peter Brock, a good friend of Globalhood, just sent us a letter:  

I am pleased to announce that my new film on poverty, development and western assistance, entitled They Come In The Name of Helping, is now available to view at www.BaiBureh.org. This film attempts to highlight the need for respect and humility on the part of the West by exploring the issues of poverty and development from the perspective of the poor themselves. Through the voices of young, educated Sierra Leoneans, this film offers valuable insights into how we can participate in the development process without reenforcing the dehumanizing legacy of colonialism. To view the film or read a more complete description, visit www.BaiBureh.org. Since the film is meant to provoke debate and critical thought about issues that affect billions of people worldwide, please share it with as many people as possible.

Wonderful! Shortlisted for the first annual Globalhood film awards.

From the good folks at Good Magazine comes a short animation about the Death Industry and it’s costs (economically, environmentally or otherwise). It’s a nice–if slightly macabr–reminder of how the unintended and unlooked-for consequences of our actions can have highly deletirious effects on the world around us. It’s also a pretty neat video.

Last year before I moved to New York, I spent the night at a friend’s house in Brooklyn and found myself reading Vice Magazine, which is something I hadn’t done in a long time. Vice, for those of you who aren’t in the snarky hipster set, is a magazine for snarky hipsters. Traditionally, I found it amusing and endlessly aggravating. The issue I was reading, however, was something all together different; it was devoted entirely to the Iraq war and was FANTASTIC. It’s a little bit after the fact (The Iraq Issue came out six months ago or more) but still well worth a look. What’s most amazing is how much of the magazine is devoted to simple dialogue with normal Iraqi people (and how rare this journalistic approach has been in the last four years). Here’s the issue, each and every article.

There’s more. This month’s Vice features an intersting article about heroin rehab in Afghanistan. There’s a lot to wade through to get there, but it’s well worth reading.

One last bit, Vice has also launched a online TV channel, found here. Which has awesome news features about mining practices in Virginia, oil spills in Brooklyn, drug running in Lebanon, and the ongoing crisis in the Sudan.

It’s all good stuff. I’m as surprised as anyone to see it come out of Vice, but, the world is a strange and wonderful place.

From Bill “The Thrill” Moyers comes this interview with the Yes Men, a group of guerrilla political satirists of a rather Swiftian bent.

Full text, Youtube videos and relevant links are here.

From the Times comes this article on HIV infection in Mexican migrant populations. Full text here.

The article itself is not entirely surprising, and yet it is a good reminder of the collateral costs of globalization. Of course diseases have a long history of ignoring international borders, but it is nonetheless worrying to watch the reciprocity between disease and poverty play out in real time.

Perhaps similarly relevant, but less grave, the new M.I.A. single, Bird Flu.

Globalhood is very excited to announce the launch of its photo gallery.

These photos from around the world are available for purchase as prints, and all net proceeds will go towards supporting Globalhood’s projects. Of course, you’re also more than welcome to donate directly to the project of your choice. And if you are a photographer who would like to donate some images, we would love that as well. Kindly direct all inquires to julia at globalhood.org.

Sorry, but the Talking Heads reference is too easy.

Last weekend, there was a wonderful piece on This American Life about provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in Iraq. The amazing bits, aside from Ira Glass’ ultra-staggered cadence, are the lessons that development initiatives simply cannot function as a bandaid for misplaced bellicosity, and that even interventions with the best of intentions do not, in and of themselves, smoothe over the jagged edges of international relations.

Here’s the episode page; click “full episode” to listen in. The relevant part starts at 15:36, but really, the whole episode is worth a listen.

For those who missed the NY Times Science section article about the Cooper Hewitt Exhibition, and KickStart (the social entrepreneurship organization that developed the products), there is a video about their products that accompanied the article. 

KickStart’s goal is to help people rise out of poverty, focusing on the development of new agricultural and human necessity technology that is geared towards the needs of the supposed 90% of the world that first world design ignores.  KickStart develops and sells new products and business plans, provides training, and helps develop local industries around their products in developing countries.

For example, they sell an uphill pumping water pump to farmers for around US$50. It may have been difficult for the families to save the money, but after a few months, their profits are often multiplied many times.  Local industries and wage earning jobs are developed in manufacturing and provision of the KickStart products as well. KickStart is involved in the whole process to ensure the most success.

Here is another of their success stories