Let’s Go jHUB 2016
LET’S GO jHUB! is an innovation hub and training development initiative carried out in 2016, following up on the media development project ‘Step Up Juba Media Lab’ in 2015. Originally intended to be a program taking place exclusively in Juba, South Sudan, heavy fighting between two key rival factions erupting in the city during the 5th independence anniversary commemorations in July 2016 radically shifted the program’s direction. With the capital city under siege as the programme was about to begin, a decision was taken by the community members in collaboration with their newly established regional partners to move on, ensuring that the training and the resolve to overcome challenges in reaching the goals of an open society were upheld.
The ensuing re-structuring of the project took it from a local training initiative addressing larger groups directly alongside the core jHUB team of media and innovation ‘pioneers’ (as they had become known in the initial phase of foundation) to an intensive and much more rigorous Training of Trainers (TOT) scenario. The six programme units, initially planned to be held in Juba, were comprised of three professional development consultations aimed at further structuring the mechanisms of development and financial sustainability of the hub itself. Partner organisations from four neighbouring countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda – ‘stepped-up’ to host the jHUB teams, expanding the training for the South Sudanese community by introducing their own unique contexts, histories and means of work to the program.
With the earlier jHUB community members themselves scattered as refugees and displaced persons in numerous locations, including Kenya, northern Uganda and other home regions in South Sudan, the original intention of this group to establish one community oriented media training center, turned into a meshed network of small nodes and local initiatives. While jHUB was able to successfully continue its path of development, the seeds for citizen’s media, training and youth innovation were laid out also in these regional nodes and the newly trained mentors of the programme felt confident enough with the skills and collegial support of their peers to set up their own structures.
In the process of these trainings, the teams together with the partners developed the open source toolkit #ASKotek – an open technology emergency kit. #ASKotek takes advantage of locally available resources to support people in fragile post-conflict environments. A versatile, robust and mobile trainers kit with 40 items designed to tackle a range of basic education, innovation and self-training challenges #ASKotek enables ‘Access to Skills & Knowledge’ in the field … anywhere!
DOWNLOAD: jHUB brochure 216
DOWNLOAD: jHUB Open Hardware Guide 2016
