Airjaldi and the Tibetan Technology Center are headquartered in Dharamsala, India, up in the foothills of the Himalayas. Read all about what’s going on now. They’ve done a lot – including getting noticed by Cisco and starting a Cisco training academy.

In other news, one of the senior high school students who participated in Project Happiness in 2006-2007 just arrived at Emory University (in Atlanta) where he starts class next week. I’ve particularly been in touch with two of the guys who got into the computer and video technologies, both of whom are in college now. These kids are doing well. They really sweated it out over the examinations and college admissions, and it’s good to see how they are progressing. Although it probably seemed like a lot to him when he left India, he arrived in Atlanta with $1,000 in his pocket to start school. Once he starts buying his books for class, that won’t go far…

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You play using email and your digital photos. We suggest that you play from a mobile phone, but you can use regular email if your phone doesn’t do photos.

Visit Faces of Happiness to play.

Or just go take a look at the photo mosaic.

See also the Project Happiness blog.

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Next Monday, November 19th, 4pm to 5pm at MediaX (Wallenberg Hall, Stanford University campus, Palo Alto CA), we’ll be conducting a presentation and deconstruction of the ideas behind the media approach in Project Happiness. To attend, please locate Wallenberg Hall in the Stanford map, and join us by 4pm. We will start on time, as our use of the media-rich room is strictly limited. If you’d like to join us, please let us know and we’ll reserve a place for you. Read more and see the video…Project Happiness, in its online form, is a place where teens (ages 16-19) can share video and photographic media. They locate existing online media, or they create their own, and then create portfolios of works in order to illustrate points they’d like to make. Although we are built around classrooms and teachers, which leverages our tiny central staff, the project is world-wide in scope.

The trailer (below) will give you a quick introduction to the documentary we’re making about the inception of the project.

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As we were just getting Project Happiness moving, a guy named “DK” pinged us – interested in our project because he creates podcasts dealing with media for and by youth.

This guy is moving and shaking and getting a lot of activities going. And his media approach is quite interesting.

“DK” of MediaSnackers.com

Here’s what DK says about his work – “I launched MediaSnackers in June 2006 with an educational background in communications and media, plus a professional background in local government (I was the UK’s first and only Corporate Youth Officer… oooh!)—I’ve done lots of things and had many roles, but my passion for working with young people (and youth professionals) has been my main focus for the past 8 years. … MediaSnackers is my ‘bat and ball’—do you fancy a game?

(The DK comes from the initials of my old name. One of the first young people I started working with called me DK and it just stuck—I never liked my old name so I adopted it fully.)”

As of this date MediaSnackers has completed 8 videocasts and 94 podcast interviews.

This is the only opportunity that you’ll get (on this blog, at least) to hear me interviewed by somebody else…if that’s of interest to you at all.

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Dave Goulding is a cinematographer who has traveled with John Sorenson and Brian Buckley to record the story of Project Happiness.

This summer we interviewed filmmaker George Lucas at his office (ranch) in Marin County, California. Well, actually the students of Project Happiness conducted the interview, and I watched as Dave and John (Sorensen) recorded everything on video tape for the documentary we’re making. Well, actually, I have nothing to do with making the documentary – I just make the online stuff happen.

What makes this so much fun? To quote Dave, “I think it’s the people you get to meet- the people you meet are just amazing!”

I talked with Dave over lunch, following the morning interview of George Lucas. We covered a mix of topics that ranged all over the globe – from Nigeria to India to the US.

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When you’re in high school (late teens) you have lots of questions. You may be more than a little anxious. You may have lots of fun. And of course you’re likely to feel like you’re the only one in the world who feels this way — whatever way you feel at the moment. You’re cramming more and more information into your brain every day, and the stuff mixes and munges around, and questions get generated all the time.

I certainly remember more than a few such feelings.

In Project Happiness we’re trying to open up lines of communication among teens around the world, so they can study and discuss happiness. In many views of the world, there’s short-term happiness and long-term happiness. Short-term usually referring to gratification of immediate personal desires, and long-term referring to more selfless pursuits which tend to produce longer-term feelings of satisfaction.

In an attempt to chronicle the experiences of a group of teens while they were participating in the Project Happiness process, the students from Mount Madonna School kept notes and journals this spring. There are additional notes integrated from the two Nigerian students, and from the Tibetan exiles at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala India. These were originally posted at the web site of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and with permission have been integrated into one unified post at the Project Happiness blog. [Thanks to Tom Shani for the port and the integration.]

You already have access to a couple of interviews from the journey to India: John Sorenson’s interview in Mopping up the Pixels; Emmanuel Ande Ivorgba (teacher of the Nigerian students who joined the journey) on Study Circles; coming up tomorrow an interview with Dave Goulding; and I have other audio interviews “in the can” but not yet posted.

The journey continues this year as we add a couple of dozen schools who will beta-test (pilot test) the Project Happiness Guidebook to Happiness that we’re writing right now. And students all over the world will be able to create and post their own video and audio segments to the PH web site. This will begin in mid September. Watch for more then…

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New Technology Foundation’s mission is to “Support, refine and build on New Technology High School – a national model of project based learning in a technology rich environment. Disseminate the model – methodology, tools and resources – through replication, subscription and other means. Create and support a network of schools based on the Napa NTHS model that continues to innovate, identify and share best practices.”

Learning for the 21st century includes speaking and writing well – communicating. Critical thinking. And collaboration. They’re modeled more on what the workplace looks like and less on what traditional educational institutions look like. The Foundation disseminates the work – they don’t actually run schools – but they have seeded dozens of schools! And the number is growing rapidly.

In my opinion, “preparing for a career” (in the classical sense) is an almost impossible task today. Years ago, one might prepare for a career as a doctor, or a musician. But today it’s hard to imagine that a career, if viewed as a profession, would even exist longer than 10 or 20 years – let alone for an individual’s productive lifetime. The information learned by engineers graduating from universities today, for instance, has a half-life of 3 years. During an average individual’s lifetime, he or she will have to “retread” several times!

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[In the photo you see John, Tenzin Dawa (the TCV cameraman mentioned in the audio clip), and Yeshi Khando, the teacher who picked up this project and ran with it at Upper TCV.]

John’s team of professional collaborators, David Goulding who handles the “big” camera, and Brian Buckley, who captures the sound while they’re shooting, are also interviewed in our series.

This is a challenging process, with video captured in several formats, several shoots in the field, and diverse cultures with different familiarity with the technology.

Listen as John describes the process of making the documentary, shooting in California, Nigeria and India, and how the team works to create the raw footage that then goes to the “cutting room” where it turns into a final documentary. John speaks with knowledge, insight, and deep feeling about the process.

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Many businesses do have one or more uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) that provide a short stretch of battery power for their computers in the event of a temporary failure, but in Emmanuel’s area in Nigeria, power outages might stretch for a couple of days, so a UPS won’t do any good. And gasoline is scarce and expensive, so a generator isn’t an option.

Solar power has to be one possible answer. Today Brian took a car and drove to purchase a four-panel solar array for Emmanuel to take back to his school.

The post Episode 239: In Which a Solar Array is Obtained for our Farthest Outpost appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Religion is a sensitive issue in Nigeria, as in many places, and Emmanuel has been able to help people learn about international peace and ethics based on the life of the XIV Dalai Lama in a non-religions atmosphere based on our common humanity.

Private schools play an important part in education in Nigeria. Public schools cannot handle the entire load, and students frequently begin school at a late age, so private schools have stepped in to carry part of the load. Students are encouraged to stay in school until they graduate and sometimes do not graduate until as late as the age of 23. (The photo shows Faith, Emmanuel and Mercy at Chonor House in Dharamsala.)

“Very honestly … my contact with the Dalai Lama Foundation in the first place has transformed my life. Each person knows himself – I know my background, but since January 2005 it has transformed my life in a number of ways. I should give a few examples…”

*I call these cafeteria interviews not because they offer a varied menu but because they’re sometimes conducted in a noisy or populated area, giving you the flavor of the locale, but also you’ve got to pay a little bit of attention in order to follow the interview.

The post Emmanuel Ande Ivorgba – Study Circles and Transformations appeared first on Sky's Blog.

I talked with Mikey Ginguld, who has just taken a full-time role as acting CEO/COO with AirJaldi, about how they’re doing it.

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Our three wonderful teachers (we call them coaches in the project) have made a world of difference in how the project has progressed – and the next few months for each of them will also make a huge difference as we make the quantum leap from three schools to many, many schools.

Who are they, and how and why are they making this difference?


Let’s start with our host campus. Yeshi Khando teaches English at Upper TCV here in Dharamsala. This is her first year teaching. Her energy is contagious. You pick up on it right away. Among the things you don’t know about her is that she is a singer and quite well-known here at TCV because of it. (When I was here for AirJaldi in October, she was on the stage for the entertainment night.) This is a science-oriented campus, and because the students are focused on science and math – in order to pass their exams which ultimately determine whether and where they’ll go to college or university – it’s a tough job to convince teachers and students to take time out to study ethics and (gulp) happiness! There is such a laser-like focus on academics here that you can feel it in the air. Yeshi has done a marvelous job of getting her students not only interested, but creating amazing video which we’ve put up at the P-H web site.You can tell that she truly believes that happiness comes from genuinely caring about others – and the teachings of the Dalai Lama are everywhere here. Next school term she hopes to carry the project to a second TCV campus.

Sadanand Ward Mailliard, called “S.M.” by his students, teaches at Mount Madonna School in California. SM lives and breathes a spirit of total commitment to critical thinking skills. His dedication really drives these students not only to enjoy their trip, but to truly connect with the local population, whether it be orphans in central India or orphans at TCV in northern India. SM has worked with these students to develop questions that they’ve asked of diverse and well-known individuals, then fine-tuned, during the course of the school term. To try to discover some of the many facets of long-lasting happiness. And these interviews culminate in an interview of the Dalai Lama tomorrow. The students have blogged during the school term, and are now blogging the trip daily, at a web site arranged by the Santa Cruz Sentinel (newspaper). During each day, the students visit several sites, work with the other students, and after returning to their hotel in the late afternoon they have a planning session, followed by dinner, and another session in the evening. Then the students prepare their blog entries.

Emmanuel Ande Ivorgba, of Jos, Nigeria, volunteered to help The Dalai Lama Foundation with its study circles, which are based on the book Ethics for the New Millennium, about two years ago. This high school principal (Dominion Heritage Academy) began working with a small group of his own students, but rapidly expanded to train others in nearby schools. His dedication is reflected in the fact that he has had to go to an Internet cafe in order to connect – meaning a long trek each day after school – and late hours at times. (He recently obtained a computer which he could use with a cellphone and GPRS to directly connect to the net from home.) The trip from Nigeria took persistence – in October last year he was unable to attend the AirJaldi Summit because a visa was not issued. But this time he was able to obtain a visa and bring two students with him to this event. Emmanuel’s soft-spoken demeanor is an inspiration to all. He is clearly a man anyone would turn to for advice. Emmanuel and his students have also produced video that’s available at the P-H web site.

And why and how does the project even exist in the first place? Certainly without these three teachers serving as local coaches the project would be only a shadow of itself, but the project is the brainchild of Randy Taran, a Canadian native who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Randy is executive director and founder of the project and it’s her hard work that has made it possible for these people to be here in Dharamsala talking, laughing, singing, dancing and otherwise enjoying each others’ lives. And thru her effort it will now be possible for them to interview the author of their textbook – the XIV Dalai Lama.

The post It has to be Grass-Roots or it Won’t Work appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Without them, we are just words on paper or sounds thru a pair of earbuds.

Today at the Upper Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) the Project Happiness students from three continents, representing the cornerstone schools for Project Happiness, met and shared each others’ cultures for two hours, then had dinner together to complete the day.

As hosts, the Tibetan students first performed a number of dances.

They created a mixture of traditional pieces combined with a hip-hop flavored dance. The TCV environment serves to both preserve the Tibetan culture and prepare these students for the modern world. TCV is an open campus, with visitors all over the place. Before the performance began, while waiting for everyone to arrive, some of our group played basketball with TCV boys on the playground that’s kind of a main focus and entrance for the school. Several ten-year-olds congregated and asked me to take their photo and send it to them.

For the performance, we sat in an auditorium on plastic “patio chairs” (they’re so versatile and quite commonly used here for seating), with the honored guests in the front, the visiting students behind them, and lots of kids from the TCV community taking up the rest of the auditorium. A few smaller kids sat in a corner on the stage during some of the numbers. A small dog came in and observed from the front row halfway thru.

Our camera crew was shooting most of the performance, and yet you’d never get the full “information load” thru the lens. The mix of performers, loudspeaker sound, the small dog, the kids on stage, the audience whooping and clapping for the hip-hop/Tibetan dancers, was just priceless. The performance was attended by the school principal and the TCV education director.

Mercy Bisi Olatunji performed three renditions of a native song (in three local languages), dressed in very stylish local dress.

And the Mount Madonna students sang both an invocation from the Ramayana and Jeremiah was a Bullfrog.

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In Northern California I think we see much more uniformity of vehicles – I own a Volvo station wagon, and in many parts of the world that would be considered huge, but when I drive up into the mountains (to resort areas) and park in a lot, my car is dwarfed by the surrounding and supernumerary SUVs that tower over my tiny car, making it almost invisible and impossible to spot in the parking lot. Here in India it would be large for a passenger car.

So at our lunch stop today, I decided to point my camera at the road and snap every conveyance that came along during a 120-second stretch. And here’s what I got. My analysis of the mix is: big trucks; buses packed quite full; numerous scooters, with multiple riders in every case; some bicycles, also with multiple riders in each case; one CNG (large style) rickshaw; one horse-and-cart; a truck towing a truck; a truck carrying (I can’t even count how many) tractors. And this was just a two-minute sample. An additional read is India is an industrious nation with a lot of commerce on the roadways, and very little is wasted here. I this were the US, there would be no need for car-pool lanes because every lane would be a car-pool lane.

In general the roadways in this part of India are pretty good, though crowded. And two-lane roads always become three-lane roads in practice as oncoming traffic squeezes thru. We had one really bad stretch of roadway that had seriously degraded (even since last October), and some long stretches of construction, but otherwise it’s been a pleasure to make this trip.

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