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