It all started with three small seeds, teachers in a provincial university in China. One teacher loved music, another photography, and a third writing. Their passion and dedication inspired generations of students to pursue these arts and the Plateau Cultural Initiative (PCI) was born.

The Plateau Cultural Initiative

With used cameras, recorders, and computers in hand, PCI’s students have found ways of keeping their diverse cultures alive by documenting knowledge that is being lost, and by seeking ways to employ these traditional wisdoms in adapting to changing global circumstances.

For the past two days, we have been teaching these students how to build their own websites so that they can display their work. Although it took us years to learn HTML, CSS, and PHP, these students—many of whom have only recently learned how to use computers—were able to understand the process of making a website and creating content of their own with remarkable speed. One student had already mastered six human languages (Kham, Amdo, Namuyi, Yi, Mandarin, and English) when he entered our workshop and is now well on his way to adding three computer languages to his repertoire.

Although the students were excellent, we realized that our teaching left much to be desired. We found our initial lecture-style workshop format to be ineffective. Employing smaller topic-based work stations with hands-on activities proved a better method. The topics we covered were:

How to start a simple Website:
1) Rent a domain name
2) Rent server web space from a web host
3) Decide on a content management system and install it
4) Transfer information to servers
5) Download a website theme
6) Enter Content
7) HTML, CSS, and PHP for content and theme manipulation

[Our instructional materials (videos, screenshots, and handouts) will be posted on our website shortly. We are interested in working with others to develop good training materials. Please send us suggestions.]

Hard economic times have hit rural students, like PCI’s members, the hardest. With few job opportunities, one student wrote, “Seeing so many unemployed graduated students in the past made me realize that I must have a skill that others don’t have in order to find a job and I must help others know that I have this skill by making a website”.

Many students also wanted to help the world know more about their local traditions and ways of life. They were sad to see things changing so fast and to realize that so much of their grandparents’ knowledge has not been passed on to their parents.

Still more students wanted to create new knowledge through online tools. One student is working to create an online tagging system for four languages not included in the global forum. A team of students will work together to translate Wikipedia into local languages. One student will work to create an online learning platform for languages currently not taught by mainstream texts. Another student wants to develop a market price transparency system and use cell phone SMS messaging to ensure that rural farmers can sell their produce for a fair price.

Some may wonder why I wrote ICT for D in the title of this post. We are not inventing new communication technologies nor distributing cell phones to rural communities that never had them before. Instead, the goal of these workshops is to teach people how to use communication technologies to create their own online tools; ones that can help them implement local solutions and exchange ideas globally.

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The Plateau Cultural Initiative is struggling to stay alive in today’s difficult economic climate. You can help by:

1) Donating your used cameras, recorders, and computers
2) Hosting an exhibition of their photographs, music, and writing
3) Financially supporting their work

Please contact me if you are interested in helping out in any of these ways, and stay tuned for links to PCI’s up-and-coming websites!

One Earth Designs (OED) was founded in 2007 by Catlin Powers and Scot Frank ( OED website; OED blog; OED facebook page; Twitter @OneEarthDesigns). Catlin will post on Mondays and Wednesdays. You can also find her on Twitter @CatlinPowers.