In the first webinar, co-hosts Aurra Kawanzaruwa and Yonty Friesem will share their personal journey to explore empathy/Ubunto as they work in the area of media education and digital citizenship across the globe. Additionally, they will set up the stage to discuss the connection between the scholarship and practice of media education with the concepts of Ubuntu/Empathy. As we get more and more surrounded by digital media, its impact grows on our interpersonal relationships and connecting with others. Issues of depolarizations, compassion, intercultural encounter will be discussed. Participants are welcome to join the conversation and share their own journey.
DAY: Friday, September 20th, 2024
TIME: 10AM EST | 16:00 CAT/GMT+2 | 20:30 IST
LOCATION: Register for the Webinar Series HERE
Co-Hosts:
Aurra Kawanzaruwa, fondly known as Ms Aurra, is an award-winning entrepreneur, educator, creative, and digital native. Aurra's work includes designing and implementing programs for digital inclusion and skills transfer for children and young people across Africa and abroad. As the Education Lead at AfriDigital PL, she focuses on technology advancement and its impact on African societies and economies. In 2018, she founded AfriDigital, initially focusing on the 4th Industrial Revolution and producing events like the Africa Is Digital Summit.
Yonty Friesem is the Executive Director of the Media Education Lab who also works an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the School of Communication and Culture at Columbia College Chicago. Yonty is an award winning educator, advocate, and filmmaker who design and provide professional development for educators applying a trauma-informed, healing-centered and equity-based lens. For more than twenty five years, Yonty has worked with a number of organizations, universities and colleges around the world to increase their inclusive practices.
About This Webinar Series
In a world connected by technology, where does Empathy and Ubuntu fit in?
The ‘Digital Ubuntu/Empathy’ webinar series explores the relationship between our use of digital media and interpersonal communication. In other words, thew co-hosts will unpack the relationship between scholarship of empathy, the Ubuntu philosophy and the way we engage in the digital world. The webinar series aims to delve deeper into current global scholarship to understand how people around the world use media to connect.
We hope to continue engaging with our community and invite guests for future webinars and discuss a study, cool book, podcast, video or any media related to our interests on empathy, Ubuntu and mediated communication. Please get in touch:
Aurra Kawanzaruwa, co-Host | aurranicole@gmail.com
Yonty Friesem, co-Host | Yonty@MediaEducationLab.com