Help Needed

Help Needed

Please note the new Blogad in my right-hand column for Radio 68H. It's up at the request of longtime friend Doug Arellanes. From Doug's e-mail to me about Radio 68H, which is in need of help after the tsunami:

The 68H guys are definitely for real. Their Aceh correspondent was taken hostage in '03 by Indonesian soldiers, but 68H has continued to report on the insurgency there fairly, which is quite a feat.

68H has been on the air since 1999, when it was just an idea to put together a national network to counter the Suharto-controlled state radio and TV. Technically, they were early adopters, using MP3s and FTP and e-mail to send reports from outlying areas into Jakarta, where they were edited together into a short nightly news broadcast that was then sent back out to the affiliates. That was in '99, when MP3s were still kind of exotic... Nowadays they have 400 affiliates, their own satellite transponder channel, and are a growing business.

The Blogads group isn't yet set up to handle PSAs, but if you would like to help get the word out, please contact Doug directly.

Also, I meant to point out a situation highlighted by another friend at Asymmetrical Information. One of her classmates at University of Chicago has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He hails from a very small town in China. As Jane says: "His parents borrowed from everyone they knew to get him into college; once he finished, he was able to pay back that debt in a year. Now he wants to help other kids in this remote area have a shot at a good education."
- posted by Amy @ 1/27/2005 11:49:00 AM