She Dances is an amazing non-profit here in Birmingham that we have had the pleasure of working with over the last year. We designed their first t-shirt and in so doing, created their logo symbolizing freedom for children trapped in the sex trade.

Their Mission:

To provide healing, hope and a future to girls who have been victims of human trafficking.Through safe homes, raising awareness and the arts, we strive to create a movement of freedom.

Their Work:

There are over 27 million people in the world today who are held as slaves. There are at least 1.2 million children who are sold into slavery for the purposes of sexual exploitation each year. She Dances strives to create a movement of response to this injustice within artists, musicians, organizations, churches, and every breathing soul…

Hope in Honduras is a movement they have started in order to build a safe home for girls in Tegucigalpa, Honduras who have been victims of human trafficking. In order to raise funds to build the safe home, She Dances is hosting a benefit called Art brings Hope on September 25th at The Matt Jones Gallery. Please check out their site and consider being a part of this very worthy cause.

To learn more about She Dances, please visit http://www.shedances.org.

I’m not sick. Not that kind of virus. But, if you can imagine a virus…think back to a time that you were in school and someone came in sick. The next day it was a few of you and then suddenly everyone in town had the flu or cold or whatever it was that was going around.

I know that’s a pretty negative image…shots, pills, days spent in bed missing out on whatever it was you were supposed to be doing. So let’s take that notion and revamp it a little bit.

Strip away the negative connotations of a virus; let’s just take the way that it spreads. One person has it, they give it to another who gives it to another who gives it to another…I think you get the picture.

Now…replace the virus itself with the story of a group of Sudanese refugees living on the fringes of Cairo (a story that we’ll dive into soon). So you have the story. Now, you go tell someone. But don’t just tell them. That’s not quite enough. You have to make it contagious. You have to spread it. You have to give it to them in a way that doesn’t allow them to stop it…rather, a way that drives it home and leaves them with no choice but to spread it further.

Now it’s rolling. You’ve told them, they told someone who told someone…and you have participated in the viral spreading of an idea; an idea that was on your mind and now is on the minds of 10 or 100 or 1000 others. And it only took two things. A compelling story and your willingness to participate in it.

The big kicker is that it’s almost impossibly easy. Just stop for a second and realize that people listen to you. It’s not a question, not a competition…it’s a fact. People listen to you. Maybe it’s one person, your mom. Perhaps it’s the 18 students in your class. I could be the 300 people in your congregation. Maybe it’s the 10,000 people who read your magazine. Whether it’s 1 or 10,000 the point is that people listen to you and care about what you’re saying.

Now add that to the endless ways that you can communicate with those people. Facebook, twitter, e-mail, blog…let’s go old-school, a phone call…a letter, a conversation over coffee. And these are just a small handful of the possibilities available to you to create and spread stories. People want to hear what you have to say and you have all of the tools that you need to say it.

So say something worth saying. No one can rewrite stories that they haven’t heard.

Back in January/February I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Meto Kenya with an organization called Integrity Worldwide. Integrity Worldwide (or IWW) is an organization based out of Selma Alabama doing a lot of work in Africa, specifically Uganda and Kenya. Their model is really amazing: they go into a community and help the community in the ways that the community wants to be helped. IWW really gives a voice to the community and empowers them to help themselves. During our 2 week stay in Meto IWW provided free medical clinics for hundreds of the Maasai, funded and oversaw the digging of Meto’s first well, dedicated the foundation for a new library that they’re helping the people there build, and delivered some of the community’s first books, handed out 5 Tons of seed and food to the people, held a women’s ministry, provided prayer for the people and spent countless nights worshiping with the Maasai. It was a beautiful and incredibly fruitful trip and I was really honored to be a part of helping to tell their story. This is one part of the project that we were doing, a piece called “Tenebo” that gives a glimpse into the lives of the Maasai of Meto and what it’s like to live there. I hope it does the work that IWW and God is doing in Meto justice. For more information on how you can get involved with the work that IWW is a part of you can visit them at http://www.integrityworldwide.com/

Tenebo from Bedouins International on Vimeo.

The Banquäla has come and gone. It’s weird, when you’ve been thinking about something for so long, planning, tweaking, preparing and obsessing over it…then suddenly it’s gone. I’ve found myself feeling slightly empty, a little dazed and a lot overwhelmed with the lack of a monumental task looming over me. I’m sure I’ll settle in and find myself buried in a mountain of projects before I know know it, but for now I’m sort of enjoying the subtle shock of this moment that I’m in.

In the midst of all of that there’s still a single word that continues to resonate with me. It seems to permeate my days, my work, my conversations. Even “non-Bedouins” conversations…it’s always there in some way, shape or form.

That word, as you may have guessed, is MEDIA.

I’m going to begin unloading my thoughts on media over the next few weeks on this blog. I’m going to talk about why I think media is, is becoming and will continue to be an amazingly powerful tool. I’ll talk about why I think media can change the world and how I think that can happen. I’ll talk about how media has impacted specific organizations and people and give you examples to prove it. I’ll talk about the responsibility that those who are making media (that’s you, even if you don’t think it is…I promise) have and how to respect and respond to that responsibility. But most importantly I’ll talk about how YOU can get involved.

I am not media. Bedouins is not media. In fact, we’re a very teeny tiny small sliver of what’s happening with media. But here’s the cool thing. So are YOU. No matter who you are or what you do, you are a producer of media.

We’ll pick up there soon…I do have something slightly more specific and “Bedouins” related to mention before I sign off and let you get back to your lives…

If you scroll down a few posts you can read about a truly amazing organization called Kiini. Kiini contacted us and expressed a need for media, a lack of funds and skills to make the type of media that they need and a desperate desire for our (Bedouins’) help in tackling that obstacle; an obstacle that is seemingly holding back their organization from making the progress that they would like to be making.

We said YES.

So as mentioned before, we’ll be traveling to the heart of Kenya to spend a week with the fine people at Kiini touring their sites, interviewing the people they’re working with and documenting the progress and the need that they’re a part of there.

Want to help us out? I have a really cool way that you can make the Kiini Project possible.

Buy a book.

Here’s the deal – we put a lot of time into producing a really beautiful book for the Banquäla. The book has the stories of the amazing organizations that we were able to partner with over the last year and a half. It also has images from all over the world showing some amazing people doing some amazing work. It’s 160 pages hard bound.

So here’s my proposition. Buy a book. You get a really beautiful book that not only shares with you the stories of some amazing work happening around the globe and demonstrates the power of media to aid in that work, but you get a book that allows you to continue to spread the word about these organizations on your own.

The books cost $75 and we raise approximately $20/per book towards the Kiini Project from each one sold.

You’d really help us out if you did, and we really want to put these books in as many hands as possible.

**If you want to buy a book e-mail us at connect@bedouinsinternational.org

Thanks for reading, thanks for thinking, thanks for participating in our quest to refocus the heart of media – a quest that we’ve been thinking about that for several years now…glad you’re joining us!

-Stephen

For those of you who couldn’t make it, here are some photos from Banquala 2009. Thanks to Elaine Davis for taking these lovely photos!

Our lovely volunteer checker-inners:

Two of our speakers, Jonathan Smyth and Daniel Bashta chit chatting before they went on stage:

Big thanks to D’Armond Catering for the lovely spread!

Checking out the art:

Some more art:

Thanks to Wilder Adkins for the wonderful music!

To see more photos, check out our Flickr.

Thanks to everyone who came out and made the night a success! Can’t wait for Banquala 2010!