Children Without Borders

The internet can give children virtual wings, exposing them to people and information from around the globe. Our goal is to let kids value their heritage by exploring and sharing it globally with other kids. Children Without Borders is a student-driven program encouraging the development of global literacy, through collaborative video production and sharing. The goal is to allow children around the world to share stories with each other and to learn about themselves.

There are four goals of this project. They are:

• to increase cultural awareness
• to facilitate organic language learning
• to create and hone technical skills
• to develop topical expertise

The project website can be seen at Children Without Borders.

The challenge was to find hardware and software cheap and easy enough to be distributed to and used by the kids. It costs under $100 to outfit each child with camera, memory, supplies, and software to do their video editing. The model uses computers at Internet Cafes to do the editing, uploading, and to maintain communication after the coordinator leaves. For more technical information, visit the project's resource page.

The main contribution of this project is the exploration of the low-end video realm. Many people interested in leading video projects do not have the time, or expertise to explore the space of cheap cameras and editing software. Our solution is very inexpensive and relatively easy to implement, ideally providing a framework for many people to establish their own video creation and sharing projects around the world.