This is an archive of the Dadamac.net website, as it was in 2015, it is no longer being updated.

Dadamac Day 2013 - The video

Our celebration of Dadamac Day 2013 with John Dada and Indy Johar in London is now ready for viewing. I explained the background in Reflections on Dadamac Day 2013

Now you can experience the event through this video  - http://vimeo.com/81221900

Contents

I haven't tried to mention all that was covered - I've just given "the shape" of the session in case you are looking for something specific. The timings for these contents are given in minutes and seconds and are approximate.

  • Francis Sealey's introduction
  • 2.55 - Pamela McLean on the start of Dadamac, a greeting from Fola (representing "Dadamac online")  an update from him on teachers and ICT in Oke-Ogun, and an idea for training through local radio.
  • 8.30 - John Dada - How Fantsuam Foundation has developed from its starting point of micro-finance in response to local interests and needs. He mentions just a few, ranging from computer training and establishing a Cisco academy, to HIV/AiDS interventions and other health work, to impact investment for a tractor. He explains why it is important to have an integrated approach, rather than a single issue one, and how Dadamac gives a global perspective to the local work of Fantsuam Foundation. He mentions what few people realise - that he co-founded Fantsuam Foundation after moving to the UK, but was drawn back to direct it locally. 
  • 23.15 -  Indy and John start discussing things together. They look at general issues of integrated community development, and Indy also makes comparisons with his own experiences in India and regarding the UK. 
  • 43.30 - "Fast Tractor" impact investment.
  • 49.00 - Q and A session.
  • 1 hour 22.45 - John talks through a few photos
  • Separate video http://vimeo.com/80642224 -  people commenting after the event

I believe we'll look back on Dadamac Day 2013 as a key date, after which Dadamac's approach will be better understood.

Dadamac has a genuinely 21st century vision of community development. It's an approach that could never have come into being before the Internet which has enabled our communication and collaboration at a distance. The Dadamac approach is integrated locally according to the needs expressed by local people, and then integrated globally by connecting local with local, and local with global through the Internet.

This event was more than the work of one evening, and more than a showcase for an existing story.

It was a time when separate projects, organisations and strands of work (with impressive track records, and histories of patient long-term personal commitment) came together in new ways. As the Q and A session showed, this history of previous commitment was true not just of the organisations represented at the front, but also of people speaking from the rest of the room.

Those connections and our better understandings of each other are what I found so exciting about Dadamac Day 2013, and it makes me wonder what new collaborations will be emerging as a result by Dadamac Day 2014.

Many thanks to everyone involved, not only on Dadamac Day itself but also people online, in our wider Dadamac Community, throughout the year, and also to Steve Podmore for the videos. There is so much to see that I didn't notice during event itself, and I've been newly informed while watching them. I find them inspirational - I hope you will too.

Getting involved

If you want to get actively involved do one or all of the following: