CRONICAS DE HEROES is a campaign of positive thinking that reports civic courage as an example of collaboration of civil society. It gives to people a place where they can make public and share with others those small acts of kindness, respect, honesty and other positive contributions to society.
CRONICAS DE HEROES was originally established in New York City after the 911 events as “Hero Reports,” a project carried out by Alyssa Wright, student from the Center for Civic Media /MIT Media Lab. It was a reaction to the NY Metropolitan Transit Authority’s “See Something, Say Something” campaign, which focused on reporting suspicious activity oppositely Hero Reports directed civic energy toward reporting positive activities that encourage constructive societal changes.
Prof. Csikszentmihalyi Director of the Center decided to look beyond national boundaries to implement the project in Juárez, MEX, in this occasion he invited me to participate; we named the campaign CRONICAS DE HEROES. When we started the campaign in Juárez for some it seemed as an utopian project given the present insecurity and levels of violence, but as I said in my initiative talks when I presented the project in Juarez, why not give it a chance and see it as a tool that could develop a positive change. That said some of the goals of Crónicas are:
On December 20th 2010 CRÓNICAS DE HÉROES was officially announced to the media and launched in Juárez. That day we made public our website http://juarez.heroreports.org/ since then I and my team in this city have imparted informative talks about the initiative, additionally we have been involve in multiple public activities encouraging civic participation. Currently the initiative collaborates with various local media, several radio stations read positive stories on air and some newspapers publish weekly from the existing reports on our website. At this moment we have 981 positive reports in our website.
It has been especially interesting for the team of CRÓNICAS to see how a web based project as originally implemented in the United States, in Juárez, MEX has become a mixture of mechanisms, in which social contacts and active procedures have been reflected on both, online and on daily participation.
As a result of this positive response and the great participation in Juárez, we are now preparing to launch CRÓNICAS DE HÉROES in other cities. However currently the Center for Future Civic Media feels that Crónicas is ready to spin off and be independent from the center. This is the main reason why I am asking the Spot.us community to help me to maintain CRÓNICAS; I believed in this project since the beginning, I have seen on the ground what does it mean and what it can do, I believe that if people has responded in an affected society such Juárez to this initiative is because projects of this kind are needed.
