KEP in action

To be a little more specific of our work, KEP is made up of three subgroups:

1. the Website team (Gianina Carlos and Michael Tyler),

2. the Advertising/PR team (Kevin de Leon and Debra Marovitch), and

3. the Research and Presentation team (Krista Gonzales, Nelly Montoya, Rindala Obeid, and myself)

 

While we each have our own concentrations, we collaborate and overlap into each other’s concentrations when needed. The Website team is responsible for editing and layout of the website (as well as developing our group logo). The Advertising/PR team works on establishing community relations with other organizations, campuses, and/or possible presentation locations. The Research and Presentation team provides the bulk of the website content, as well as the content for our presentations.

 

So, how does the website work?

 

The website, though currently under construction (expected opening date in two weeks!), will offer abstracts of a variety of news stories in the Middle East, mainly focusing on: Iran, Iraq, Palestinian/Israeli conflict, Lebanese/Israeli conflict, and OPEC.

 

Each of these topics will have five or so major news headings for the week. Those news headings will then have links to five different articles about the same event or issue, as well as abstracts that will summarize the articles. These five different articles will come from different countries and political biases, giving our audience various perspectives of one issue. The news center will be updated on a bimonthly basis.

 

The website will also offer a bit of background on the Middle East, our personal profiles, and other suggested reading, as well as links to our personal blogs. We wish to show that we come from very diverse backgrounds, political stances, and worldviews, and yet, because we came together, talked together, and had one common goal, we have accepted our differences and continue to work together for our vision.

 

Our presentations revolve around showing not only that all media IS biased, but also that we CAN have and demand a more complete view of world and local events, so that we may better evaluate and understand our surroundings.

An intro to KEP

Since I will be talking about our Knowledge Equals Power project quite frequently, I suppose I should expand on it beyond what the “About” section has summarized.

We started out in Fall of 2006— eight of us, six females and two males, of various cultural backgrounds, political viewpoints, and not all of us Seventh-Day Adventists. Somehow, we had found ourselves in the same Honors class faced with the looming prospect of having to improve the situation of a struggling, non-profit organization in our community. However, as a lot of us struggled to find a patron organization for our specific interests, many of us didn’t know where to start looking. We realized, then, that there was a major component missing, which is simply… AWARENESS of what is happening in our local and global community.

As we each watched the news from our native countries or other countries around the world, we discovered the wide discrepancy in media coverage even over a single event and that, we as an American public, do not receive a very broad picture, especially when it comes to global issues. It took hours of sitting and talking for us to come to the epiphany that yes, we could at least try to do something about the situation.

The obstacles, dead-ends, and frustrations we have gone through and continue to go through are refining and molding our attempts of bringing all those interested a broader, more complete picture of the world. Because the Middle East is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented regions of the world, we have focused our project on issues pertaining to the Middle East.