Rising Voices and Open Society Institute's Health Media Initiative are happy to announce the six newest health-focused citizen media outreach projects. We received over 110 proposals from health activists and organizations based in over 50 different countries. The six selected grantees represent the most innovative applications of citizen media tools like blogs, podcasts, and online video to help further the advocacy goals of public health organizations, and to empower the communities they work with.
In Brasov, Romania, the Casa Sperantei hospice center will train its nurses, doctors, and staff how to use audio and video recording equipment to share the direct stories of patients with life-threatening illnesses. The center's staff will also take advantage of their online media training and interactive website to explain the objectives, successes, and challenges in palliative care, which focuses on improving end-of-life care for patients and their families, with a special focus on vulnerable populations including the elderly, children, and patients with cancer or HIV/AIDS.
In the township of Kwa Mashu, on the outskirts of Durban, South Africa, the Kwa Mashu Community Advancement Project (K-CAP) will use its Ekhaya Imagination Lab to train 20 new citizen journalists from within the township how to report on local stories related to local health issues affecting the community. In 1998 Gugu Dlamini was stoned to death in Kwa Mashu after publicly declaring her positive HIV status. The twenty citizen journalists trained at K-CAP will aim to counter such severe stigma to HIV and AIDS while also bringing local health issues to an international audience.
Pavel Kutsev of the Drop-in Center will use blog posts, photos, podcasts, and online video to share his experiences working at a harm reduction facility based in Kyiv, Ukraine. The blog will open a window to the daily reality of drug users and describe how that reality affects public health throughout the country.
The Orizonturi Foundation in Campulung Moldovenesc, Romania will create a blogging club for mental health service users which trains them how to maintain a weblog, upload videos to online sharing sites, and use social networks. The technical skills will enable the participants to share their own stories and forge their own online identities.
In Brazzaville, Congo the AZUR Development organization, as part of its AIDS Network Africa initiative, will “train communication officers of local AIDS organizations in digital story telling, podcasting, and the creation of blogs to document the stigma and discrimination of people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS in Congo in order to use them as a tool for advocacy, education, and the promotion rights of people infected with HIV.” Each communication officer will describe how the AIDS pandemic is currently affecting the local community where he or she works and what daily life is like for people living with HIV and AIDS.
Last, but not least, the FrontAIDS project based in St. Petersburg, Russia will use citizen media to monitor accessibility to treatment for people living with HIV, AIDS, hepatitis, and TB in 20 regions around Russia. The interactive blog-based site will become a an aggregator and go-to resource of citizen media information related to health issues around Russia.
The six projects are diverse in their geography and their strategic approach, but they all share a desire to train health activists to use new media in order spread awareness about their work and the communities they serve.
Congratulations to the new grantees! I´m sure they´ll bring amazing stories, images and video to the Rising Voices Family. We´ll be on the lookout
posted on June 28th, 2008 at 7:54 am - #5837Congratulations on the new round of funding. We look forward to connecting and sharing information.
posted on June 28th, 2008 at 8:19 am - #5840[...] Originally published on Rising Voices. [...]
posted on June 28th, 2008 at 8:31 am - #5841Congratulations to the newest projects. All the projects sound very inspiring. Here’s looking forward to your stories being told and shared with everyone here.
posted on June 28th, 2008 at 12:20 pm - #5864[...] Six new health-related projects were announced on Saturday in conjunction with the Open Society Institute’s Health Media Initiative; details about these new projects are here. [...]
posted on July 1st, 2008 at 2:01 pm - #6053[...] Public Health Projects to Use Citizen Media to Empower Community Voices By Global Voices. Originally published on Rising Voices. [...]
posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 8:33 am - #6105[...] « Public Health Projects to Use Citizen Media to Empower Community Voices [...]
posted on July 4th, 2008 at 1:30 pm - #6432[...] que desde 50 países diferentes han recibido en respuesta a su programa Health Media Initiative. Seis proyectos con innovadoras aplicaciones de las herramientas de comunicación online (blogs, podcast, vídeo…) puestas al servicio de organizaciones que trabajan en el ámbito de [...]
posted on July 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am - #6535[...] month, we announced six new Rising Voices citizen media projects in partnership with the Open Society Institute’s [...]
posted on July 19th, 2008 at 8:24 am - #7836[...] par-dela les frontières et les océans de la grande famille de Rising Voices. Aujourd’hui je vous présente nos 6 autres petits frères et soeurs qui vont s’engager a nos côtés et avec votre soutien dans la plus belle des aventure. Cette [...]
posted on August 5th, 2008 at 9:35 pm - #9500[...] Public Health Projects to Use Citizen Media to Empower Community Voices was translated into Bangla by Sonia, French by Claire Ulrich, Italian by Tamara Nigh, Macedonian by Elena Ignatova, Spanish by Adriana Gutierrez, Simplified Chinese by Leonard and Traditional Chinese by Leonard. [...]
posted on August 9th, 2008 at 5:11 am - #9753[...] the Dream,” is one of the six new health-focused citizen media outreach projects that were announced in June by Rising Voices and Open Society Institute’s Health Media [...]
posted on August 23rd, 2008 at 3:59 am - #10719[...] year. This project is one of the six new health-focused citizen media outreach projects that were announced in June by Rising Voices and Open Society Institute’s Health Media [...]
posted on September 12th, 2008 at 6:15 am - #12087[...] June K-CAP received a micro-grant from Rising Voices to train a group of young performing art students how to blog, with a specific focus on [...]
posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 am - #13554[...] This project is one of the six new health-focused citizen media outreach projects that were announced in June by Rising Voices and Open Society Institute’s Health Media [...]
posted on October 5th, 2008 at 5:16 am - #13782[...] Note: The latest six Rising Voices grantees are using citizen media tools to help further the advocacy goals of public health organizations, [...]
posted on November 8th, 2008 at 4:12 pm - #16639[...] works. This project is one of the six new health-focused citizen media outreach projects that were announced in June by Rising Voices and Open Society Institute’s Health Media [...]
posted on November 14th, 2008 at 3:47 pm - #17184[...] June Open Society Institute’s Health Media Initiative sponsored a special round of Rising Voices microgrants specifically targeting public health NGO’s in Sub-S…. Grantee projects include Orizonturi Foundation’s “Blogging the Dream” [...]
posted on January 15th, 2009 at 2:32 pm - #23581[...] counseling to organizing excursions. The “Blogging the Dream” project, funded through a Rising Voices micro grant, involves creating a blogging club for their mental health service users, where participants will [...]
posted on January 20th, 2009 at 9:07 am - #23848[...] the “Blogging the Dream” project, funded by a Rising Voices micro grant, a blogging club was created last year for mental health service users. The club’s members [...]
posted on March 10th, 2009 at 8:41 pm - #27183[...] project, which is funded by a Rising Voices micro grant, was launched last summer by the Orizonturi Foundation (The Horizons Foundation in English). The [...]
posted on May 18th, 2009 at 9:12 pm - #37216