Press release and photos by The Afrolatin@ Project, courtesy of Amilcar Priestley, Director.
Friday, July 25th, 2014 – Today which marks the Día de la Mujer Afro (Afrodescendant Women’s Day), the Afrolatin@ Project is pleased to announce the launch of “CONTAMOS AFRO 2015”, our regional partnership with the United Nations MY World 2015/ World We Want 2015/ Beijing +20 (www.myworld2015.org) campaign.
Between today and December 31, 2014, the CONTAMOS AFRO 2015 initiative will be collecting and facilitating the collection of MY World ballots, using the voting widget embedded at www.afrolatinoproject.org, or via the MY World 2015 app for Android phones, text (SMS) message, the WhatsApp mobile app, email or paper ballot. The MY World campaign uses an innovative set of open source tools to empower global citizens to vote on the post-2015 sustainable development goals, by anonymously selecting 6 out of 16 possible issues of importance to them and their communities. People who want to elaborate on their choices can also record an audio message via our website, WhatsApp, Skype or video message via Youtube.
At the conclusion of the campaign, the information will be given to United Nations member-states to consider in setting national policy. The data will also be accessible and useful for the public as well as activists, journalists and educators. Here is a sample of the data we have collected as part of our soft launch: http://data.myworld2015.org/?partner=AFROLA
Given, 1) the end of the period to achieve the Millennium Development Goals established in 2000, 2) the 20th anniversary of the last U.N. International Women’s conference held in Beijing, China and 3) the start of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), the MY World 2015 campaign and platform is timely.