Video Conferencing: Bringing People Face-to-Face
With the use of technology and social media, video streaming and conferencing, bringing people together from across nations and cultures has never been more efficient and easier. All you need to do is take a look at what today's story contributor, Philip Darko, has done with his not-for-profit development organization to connect people all across the globe. World Partners for Development (WPD) connects people through cross-cultural dialogue and promotes cultural understanding and global cooperation. Their new program called the Global Cross-Cultural Exchange Program links people together via video conferencing to discuss global issues. From these conferences, international visits and multimedia videos are born.
Born in Ghana, Philip came to the United States in 1996 and then returned to work on several community development projects in East Africa. This became a passion for Philip, who eventually established the World Partners for Development in 2003.
"Our organization is committed to promoting cross-cultural learning that helps create dialogue, global awareness and understanding between cultures and providing the platform for global cooperation," states Philip. "It is always better to interact with other people and learn about their culture than just imaging."
Read more of Philips story and how the World Partners for Development is making great strides to champion the concept of citizen diplomacy and promote cross-cultural understanding.
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Connecting the world through video conferencing
I was born in Ghana and then came to the United in 1996. I worked on rural community projects in Africa with many international nonprofit organizations. With my passion to empower humanity through nonprofit programs, I established World Partners for Development, www.wpdprojects.org in 2003.
World Partners for Development (WPD) is a U.S. based 501(c) 3 dedicated nonprofit organization and a registered non-governmental organization (NGO) in Ghana, West Africa that is transforming lives around the world through high impact sustainable programs with other partners. Our organization is committed to promoting cross-cultural learning that helps create dialogue, global awareness and understanding between cultures and providing the platform for global cooperation. Our innovative Global Cross-Cultural Exchange Program link all people being students, organizations, community members, and individuals from different cultures around the world to learn and discuss cultural and global issues through a live face-to-face
interactive video conferencing, multi-media video, and international community visits.Under this program, participants from both urban and rural communities with no videoconference facilities are transported to central location facilities that have such technologies. All
participating countries are then link up through the video-conference multi-points for an effective interactive dialogue that help them to become global citizens and learn that they can have positive impact on the planet by collaboration with other people around the world. To make the program reach more people in a strong effective way, video on the live videoconference programs are shown to communities and schools across regions. Out of this program, participants have been able to exchange ideas to establish strong projects in their communities. Many have become pen pals to discuss global issues affecting their lives and their communities and also have had international community visits. Some participants from many developed countries learnt from their face-to-face discussion programs that, we don’t have lions and elephants running on the streets of Africa. Neither do people leave on trees.
Our recent Citizen Diplomacy program in using music to connect Africa and U.S. schools was the Broadway musical on “The Color Purple”. This was a collaborative program between World Partners for Development and the The Broward Center for the Performing Arts in the U.S.
It is always better to interact with other people and learn about their culture than just imaging.
~Philip Darko
Posted Tuesday, July 6, 2010