Running notes from Pop!Tech ‘08.  For more posts, see the Pop!Tech blog.

photo: Kris Krug 

DR. GARY SLUTKIN, CeaseFire

Dr. Gary Slutkin asks: can put violence in the past, like we once did smallpox, by thinking about it differently? 

Specifically, by thinking of urban violence not as a moral or policy issue (that is, what’s “right and wrong”), but as a public health one.  Slutkin suggests that “violence is an infectious disease”; that it operates like a virus, following the same epidemiological patterns as health epidemics such as AIDS and tuberculosis.  He should know: Slutkin is an epidemiologist and physician who spent ten years in Africa on the frontlines of infectious diseases. Today, he’s the Executive Director of the Chicago Center for Violence Prevention. CeaseFire is the Center’s anti-violence campaign uses a public health approach to reducing shootings and killings.

If violence behaves like an epidemic, can it be cured?  Slutkin proposes that at the minimum the spread of violence can be contained (and perhaps halted) by applying the same tactics public health officers use in dealing with disease outbreaks: first: interrupt the transmission; then change social behaviors and norms. CeaseFire employs a team of “violence interrupters” - outreach workers (many of whom are ex-offenders themselves) to personally intervene and stop violent acts in the community on a case-by-case basis. Combined with a vigorous PR campaign, the aim is to ultimately change social norms - in essence, to make violence as socially unacceptable as, say, smoking.

Sound impossible?  Perhaps.  But as he points out, we once thought curing the plague was impossible too.  That was because the cause of the plague was invisible - a bacteria, inside a flea, on a rat.  By identifying the “etiologic agent” (the root cause) and making it visible, we have a better chance at finding a cure.

photo: Kris Krug

ERIK HERSMAN, Ushahidi

Erik Hersman understands the power of “making the invisible visible.”  Hersman is one of Pop!Tech’s first Social Innovation Fellows, and like most social entrepreneurs, his work is a reflection his favorite things: Africa, technology and maps.  Raised in Sudan and Kenya, Hersman is rabid techie, a web developer who writes two tech-related blogs (AfriGdaget and WhiteAfrican) and an avid map collector. He begins his talk by saying that he was born of two cultures, but lives in neither. In reality, his cultural vertigo likely fuels his ability to see opportunity where others see crisis.

Following the post-election violence that engulfed Kenya earlier this year, Hersman and fellow Kenyan bloggers created Ushahidi (the name  means “testimony” in Swahili), a website that allows users to report incidents of violence via a mobile phone text message or email.  Reports were posted to a map, creating a near-real time record of events throughout the country.   (MB note: I first wrote about Ushahidi here).

Part of the brilliance of Ushahidi is that gives voice to the myriad of stories that would otherwise be missed by the mainstream press, but its ultimate aim is more than simply a platform for citizen jpurnalism- the goal is to crowdsource crisis information. With funding from grants and a prize money from a handful of prestigious awards (including NetSquared and Knight-Batten), the plan is to build Ushahidi into a free, open source mapping tool that acts as not only as an archive, but also as an early warning system, detecting crises before they happen.

photo: Kris Krug

ERIC DAWSON, Peace Games

Slutkin and Hersman suggest that violence is not only a disease, but one that can be visualized and mapped in real time.  But the question remains: how can it be stopped from beginning in the first place?  Eric Dawson, another Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow, has an idea: teach kids “peacemaking” as a skill.  Dawson starts his talk with some sobering statistics - American children today will have witnessed 100,000 acts of violence on television before they enter the sixth grade.  His organization, Peace Games, offers a K-8 curriculum that teaches kids how to become not just victims or witnesses of violence, but peacemakers who are able to diffuse it.  The underlying theory is that violence is a learned behavior that, gone unchecked, can lead to greater acts of violence. In contrast, Dawson thinks that the skills of peacemaking can also be learned.  His goal is to have Peace Games taught as an integral part of the curriculum, alongside math and science.And it seems to be working: he says that schools that use Peace Games see a 60% reduction in violence and a 75% increase in socially peaceful behavior.