USAID at MIT's Build Peace Through Technology conference

Speeches Shim

USAID's Office of Transition Initiative (OTI) attended the "Build Peace through Technology" conference hosted at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab on April 5 and 6, 2014. Build Peace brings together practitioners, activities and technologists from around the world to share experience and ideas on using technology for peacebuilding and conflict transformation. Eight participants from OTI's field programs, representing grantees, implementing partners and OTI field staff from Burma, Yemen, Syria, Mali, Tunisia, and Honduras, participated in the conference. The participants were featured throughout the event on panels, through "Ignite Talks", and on a Tech Fair. 



In this video, Yatanar Htun (MIDO) and Aichata Sako and Mahamadou Diakite (AECOM) talk about their experience at the conference and how they technology is helping to build peace in their country.

Video Transcript 
0:22 My name is Aichata, I’m from Mali. My name is Mahamadou Diakite, I’m from Mali. 0:29 My name is Yatanar, I came from Myamar, Burma and I work for a local NGO called MIDO (Myamar 0:35 ICT for Development Organization) where we focus on ICT for development issues like internet 0:41 freedom, internet policy, advocacy and digital divide between urban and rural communities. 0:53 In Mali, the infrastructure for technology is very weak. It’s not in many place that 0:59 you have access to the internet. It’s not in many places that people can afford smart 1:05 phones. And the main objective is to build peace for 1:07 Malian reconciliation and social cohesion. MTI [Mali Transition Initiative] is a program 1:09 that is giving the opportunity to the Malians. The standard program focus more on the upper 1:18 level, they don’ get the chance to go deep down and see what isthe real problem, in the 1:23 real community. I learned a lot at this conference, and I 1:29 got a lot of networks. I got many people who can help us. I can learn how other people 1:36 are applying technology to build peace. I just want to say that technology can make 1:42 a big change, so use technology. Peace is very easy. You just need to try and 1:52 do it. The objective is how to make people’s lives 1:57 better. If you can achieve that in 20 years, that would be great.