Rising Voices » Rezwan

RV At 5: Witnessing The Rise Of Yemeni Women

Rezwan — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 23:02:38 +0000

One of the notable Rising Voices grantee project is “Empowerment of Yemeni Women Activists in New Media Techniques”, led by Ghaida'a Al Absi. When the project started in April 2009, one post talked about the ignorance about blogging in Yemen, especially among women.

The project facilitators worked hard to change the situation by imparting series of workshops in several cities of Yemen for the next two years. The challenges were many. There were frequent power cuts, many participants were so conservative, they did not allow them to take pictures of them even in veils.

Image courtesy EWAMT

But after a while it seemed like magic. As Ghaida'a writes:

These activists were really talkative and full of energy. It is like a magic, every time you train new women activists, you got some energy from them.

She thought that the EWAMT project is like a candle among other candles, which are lighting up the darkness in Yemen. And soon blogs of trainers and participants were up. We could learn many things about the women of Yemen. For example:

Because of the social pressure on women; they are trying to prove themselves through getting a higher education and gaining new skills. For example, the rate of success among girls in the secondary education is higher than among boys.

By February 2010 the first phase of the project ended with 112 female bloggers trained and 24 active blogs being published. The second phase started in Taiz city with an workshop with 15 participants. By October 2012 Sara AlMaktri, a participant, became a trainer.

The Yemeni revolution started in February 2011. And already we saw some of these women trained by EWAMT blog about the uprisings. The revolution closed down Sana'a University and the workshops were postponed. But these women kept on blogging. Olga Ghazaryan, Oxfam GB’s Regional Director for the Middle East, writes in Oxfamblog about this strong characteristics of Yemeni women:

Women’s spontaneous support of the revolution was a powerful challenge to the traditional perceptions of women’s’ roles and how they should or should not behave in public. They did something unseen and unheard of before – they went out to Change Square to protest side by side with men, staying out at night, interacting with people outside of their own family and tribe and daring to express their opinion vocally in public.

Ms. Ghazaryan adds:

In a country where every step a woman takes is circumscribed by rules and restrictions, the revolution has created a “once in a generation” opportunity to address the gender gap – one of the main drivers of Yemen’s chronic underdevelopment.

And thus the darkness was filled with lights. Ghaida'a notes:

EWAMT workshops were not only about technical issues of blogging, but also were about exploring, discussing, and raising awareness about issues had being rarely talked about it in the public sphere because of the conservity of the Yemeni society, and sometimes because of the fear from the Yemeni intelligence would arrest anyone who expresses his\her discontent about the Yemeni regime.

The challenge of the women still remains as the threats of a backlash against women’s advancement by more conservative elements is real and strong. But we hope that more people and organization like EWAMT will keep on lighting the candles as you cannot keep a burning fire hidden in darkness for long.

OpenWatch: Using Mobile To Enable Public Monitoring

Rezwan — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:25:51 +0000

There are instances of donor funded big budget public monitoring initiatives which are not so open to public or are specific to certain areas. But ICT is enabling ordinary people to use social media and cheap tools like mobile phones to increase transparency and easy public monitoring. OpenWatch is a participatory citizen media project which uses mobile technology to enable public monitoring of corrupt practices and repression.

In many countries undemocratic governments and repressive authorities abuse power and indulge in corruption. Surveillance technology is currently only available to authorities which leads to the question “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – Who watches the watchers? On the other hand citizens equipped with widely available mobile phone and other tools are increasingly emerging as whistle-blowers and are sharing more and more evidences of corruption and repression. That's where OpenWatch comes in.

OpenWatch consists of two parts, a free mobile phone application for Android and iOS which invisibly records audio and video, and an open source software to collect the recordings. All content on the site is the copyright of OpenWatch administrators and contributors and is released under the Creative-Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Users who do not have a smartphone to install the apps can also call a number to make remote recordings on OpenWatch system. The goal is that these evidences can be used to reveal corrupt practices and repression, and help bring those responsible to justice.

Here is a video explaining how OpenWatch works:

Here are the steps explained:

Step 1: Download one of OpenWatch’s apps: either openwatch or Cop Recorder. Both are free, as are their source codes.

Step 2: When you want to secretly record either audio or video, open the app and click either “Record Audio” or “Record Video.” The app will begin to record immediately, but it will appear to close. In the case of audio recording, it will return to the home screen. If you choose to record video, the screen will go blank, as if the phone has been turned off.

Step 3: Once you wish to end your recording, open the app again. The recording will immediately stop, and you will be prompted to describe the recording. The content will be uploaded to a secure server at openwatch.net, where it will be examined by openwatch and, if required, submitted for further investigation.

OpenWatch's founder Rich Jones (23) says that the project was inspired by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s concept of “scientific journalism,” journalism that’s based on documents or data but that also makes those primary sources available to the audience. He shares a lesson from Wikileaks – “for a high-profile radical transparency project to have any staying power, there can't be a single point of failure.” He believes that “crowd-sourcing the collection of secret information is possible”.

Read an interview with Rich Jones at the NewsMeBack Blog.

Please follow this project on Twitter and the project blog.

RV at 5: New Media For Health Activists

Rezwan — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:37:59 +0000

In 2008 Rising Voices and Open Society Institute's Health Media Initiative awarded micro-grants to six health-focused citizen media outreach projects. The selection was made from 110 proposals from health activists and organizations based in over 50 different countries.

One of the grantees was the AZUR Development organization's Aids Right project from Brazzaville, Congo which trained 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. Juhie Bhatia posted an introduction in Rising Voices about the project:

It is hoped that these documented stories will be used as a tool for advocacy and education, helping to promote the rights of HIV-positive people. Currently 79,000 people (or 3.5 percent of all adults) are living with HIV in Congo, and 6,400 people in the country died of AIDS last year.

What Sylvie Niombo, the project's leader, think of the challenges, notes Bhatia:

Nyombo says Most of the Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire workshop participants discovered blogs for the first time. In addition to documenting stories, they are also using blogging to publish information about their organizations, since most don't have Web sites. However, she adds that Internet access is usually only available in Internet cafés. Since these cafés cost at least $1 US an hour, the communication officers are only able to go once or twice a week.

Read some of the reports highlighted in another post of Bhatia, this one in particular:

Davy Herman Malanda posts another account of discrimination, sharing the story of Bernadette (a pseudonym), a young woman who is a second-hand clothing vendor at the Tié-Tié market in Pointe-Noire. She is the breadwinner of the family, but this changes when she discovers she's HIV positive.

Her colleagues and clients from the market are informed that she is HIV-positive. Very few clients come from now on to buy at Bernadette’s table. Her life becomes difficult, and she has difficulty in making ends meet.

Citizen media training session for communication officers and leaders of local HIV and AIDS organizations.

At Pointe-Noire, Congo, a HIV-positive married man and father was released from prison when the police became aware of his HIV status. Read more stories here.

To mark the World aids day, AIDS Rights Congo project focused their stories on a group of women who are vulnerable to sexual violence and often neglected in the fight against HIV/AIDS — those with disabilities. The project had also used blogging and other citizen media as tools to fight violence against women. Read more here and here.

The Azur Weblog “Congolese Women On The Web” describes [fr] how the Congolese women are speaking out on the web against sexual harassment. You can see the photos in there Flickr account.

This project is one of the examples of effective use of Rising Voices micro-grant to empower health activists with the use of new media & ICT in order to spread awareness about important issues to local communities.

RV at 5: FOKO – A Reflection by Joan Razafimaharo

Rezwan — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 20:11:46 +0000

Rising Voices note: This post is part of the month-long feature commemorating RV's 5th Anniversary.

FOKO from Madagascar is one of the most successful grantees of Rising Voices which has transformed Malagasy forumists into bloggers. And what a journey it had. Starting from late 2007 It continued to develop a group of citizen journalists as its workshops spread to more and more cities of Madagascar. With their powerful storytelling these bloggers played an important role during the political crisis of the country in 2009-10.

We had requested FOKO co founder Joan Razafimaharo to send her reflections on the journey of FOKO and this is what she wrote:

Joan Razafimaharo. Photo from Flickr by Oso. CC: BY-NC-SA

I remembered our thrill when we read the first publications from the bloggers. Most writers were high-schoolers and students from universities around Madagascar so we had expected lightly written posts. Since our perception of youth was limited to what mainstream media dared to cover, we had no idea of what was coming toward us.

Blog clubs were hang-outs to meet new people, to start some networking and for most of them it was the best opportunity to showcase their hidden talents and creativity. For a fact, I know that most trainers never imposed a topic neither prohibited sensitive ones. When a 17 year-old produced a powerful video where she follows a young beggar around the streets of Antananarivo, she was just sharing what she knew best : the reality she is facing everyday. Slowly but surely her message was echoed by other bloggers from other towns.

Young Foko Bloggers. Image Courtesy Foko

A teen crossed her path with a mother tending to a sick baby, this encounter in Mahabibo Market changed our lives forever. For a while after we went short on funding, we all kept in touch in a way or another. Social Media which was little known to this generation, by then, became the best way to expand their world.

I learnt from Facebook that this boy from Antsirabe just secured a job as a journalist in the capital. He didn't have an email account when we met! (and you know how annoying it can be when you are short on time with little to none connection and power during a workshop then you realize most kids have to create an email account before starting anything on WordPress). We shared many (too many) sad and happy times together. Together we opened a window. What I am sure of is that this window was opened by Malagasy to the world so they could meet the real Madagascar.

Read a detailed interview with her here.

Pakistan: Hoshmedia – Amplifying The Voices Of Pakistani Youth

Rezwan — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:18:33 +0000

Sahar Habib Ghazi started her journalism career in 2005 when she joined Geo News, Pakistan’s first independent news channel. Her experiences grew as she worked as a reporter, editor and producer in different media. Sahar was an international Knight Fellow at Stanford University during 2010-11 where she developed the concept of bridging the divide between Pakistanis – journalists and online communities (bloggers, activists and tweeters) and with the help of some Pakistani netizens she founded Hosh Media.

The contributors – bloggers, students and activists – can log onto hoshmedia.org and send in their videos, images and thoughts. The Hosh team packages these crowd-sourced contributions into news stories for mainstream media networks in Pakistan and the best contributors can also earn some money in the process.

In the above video 2011 Knight Fellow Sahar describes Hosh

Sonya Rehman writes in Audioscapes about Hosh:

‘Hosh’ is an Urdu word that loosely translated means ‘to awaken,’ and that is precisely what it hopes to do. By connecting the blogosphere and traditional reporting in Pakistan, founder and Pakistani journalist, Sahar Habib Ghazi, wanted to create a fresh way to engage the public while infusing news with youthful perspectives and voices.

I have recently talked with Sahar Habib Ghazi about Hosh.

RV: Please tell us what was the motivation behind creating Hosh Media:

SHG: Ten years ago a change in government policy took Pakistan from one all-powerful state broadcaster PTV to 24 independent news channels. There are numerous news outlets, but the existing media landscape leaves a lot to be desired. Frequent bombings and suicide attacks have pushed inexperienced TV reporters and producers into a dizzying environment of breaking news. Most reporters are sloppy with attribution. Unsubstantiated reports blare in breaking news banners on TV. On top of that, news is vulnerable to agenda-campaigns from sectarian and militant groups, as well as the intelligence agencies that heavily monitor and manipulate the flow of information. On top of that, two-thirds of the population is under 30, but the youth voice, simply gets lost in the fog of war and chase for breaking news.

But in this problematic situation, Hosh only sees an opportunity for change. Internet penetration in Pakistan is only 10%, but our facebook users have grown from 2 million to 6 million in a year. Hosh taps into this growing group.

Sahar Habib Ghazi. Image by author.

RV: Please describe how Hosh works:

SHG: At Hosh media, through online and offline mentoring we create Hoshyaar contributors that are well versed in journalism basics, ethical practices and practical applications. At Hosh, news and tips come from Pakistan’s young online crowd, a mix of bloggers, aspiring journalists and amateur photographers. Our team of volunteer editors and producers sift through contributions on our website, and eventually mentor and work with individual Hoshyaar contributors to make their stories publishable and broadcast-worthy, so their voices have more impact beyond the Internet.

RV: How many citizen journalists have you developed?

SHG: Since our launch in May 2011 we have mentored 30 young individuals, and published dozens of stories, including video reports, photo galleries, and written posts reflecting Pakistan’s diversity and stories of hope and tolerance.

RV: Could you please highlight one success story?

SHG: Bushra Shehzad is one of our young Hoshyaar contributors. A year ago, Bushra uploaded some of her amateur photography of a Sufi shrine on www.hoshmedia.org, which was published with the help of our editors on a mainstream news outlet. Our mentors saw that she had tremendous story-telling ability, and started mentoring her on featuring writing. Her feature pieces are now regularly published through Hosh. Her latest story documents Pakistan’s lost Sikh history.

RV: What is your future goal?

SHG: Our larger goal is to make media more representative of the majority, our youth, so their narratives, aspirations and voices can rewrite Pakistan's story.

The Hosh Media site also features online journalism tutorials videos for the budding citizen journalists. Please follow the project on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

Featured Guide: Social Advocacy Toolkit For Activists And Non-Profits

Rezwan — Mon, 28 May 2012 14:12:10 +0000

Socialbrite.org is a learning center and collaborative blog founded in 2009 by social media consultant, online journalist and blogger Joseph Daniel Lasica. It helps and supports nonprofits, foundations, social enterprises, activists and cause organizations to use social media to achieve their missions.

The Socialbrite platform comprises of a learning and sharing community with more than 1,000 free articles, tutorials and resources. On the occasion of the recently concluded Google Internet at Liberty 2012 conference the organization has created and launched a toolkit featuring eleven guides on social and political advocacy. These guides are aimed to be a “good starting point for activists, change agents and political reformers who want to bring positive change to their countries, their communities and the world at large”.

The 11 social change information guides include tactics for effective campaigns, guides to the best monitoring and metrics tools, lists of enabling platforms and organizations and other resources for an effective campaign:

Download all the guides from here.

Here is a slideshow from the workshop titled “Social media: Strategies & tools for advocacy campaigns” at the Internet at Liberty 2012 conference:

Internet at liberty

View more presentations from JD Lasica

Featured Tools: Mobile In A Box

Rezwan — Sun, 20 May 2012 23:23:11 +0000

With the proliferation of mobile phone in marginal and underrepresented communities it is important for citizen journalists and activists to learn the usability and tactics of this widely available technology. Since more and more mobile phone based services are coming up, learning about mobile technology can be immensely useful. And for the activists out there an useful set of guides are available online since 2008.

Mobiles in-a-box from the Tactical Technology Collective is a collection of tools and guides designed to help advocacy and activist organizations use mobile technology in their work. It was created in close consultation with more than 50 mobile technologists and rights advocates during 2007-08.

This toolkit is especially designed to showcase and inspire the use of mobile telephony for advocacy and campaigning. Using free and open source software the toolkit users can design and implement their own mobile advocacy strategies and projects.

Mobiles in-a-box contains:

Suggested tactics for using mobile phones to support advocacy

Case studies

Tools and services

How-to guides to get you started with mobile advocacy

The project is one of the successful initiatives of Tactical Tech. The Mobiles in-a-box was released in November 2008 (in French and English languages) and 4,000 hard copies of the toolkit were sent out around the world. Tactical Tech directly trained 1,500 advocates and received millions of hits in this website.

Mobiles in-a-box is no longer being updated but it has been published under a Creative Commons license that allows people to translate, adapt and extend the contents. These tools need to be translated in many language so that to benefit more communities. You can download an English version of the tools from here.

Witness: Learning To Use Videos For Change

Rezwan — Sun, 13 May 2012 21:42:44 +0000

WITNESS, a human rights non-profit organization based in USA, empowers people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice. Founded in 1992 by musician Peter Gabriel, WITNESS is working to advance human rights through the use of video for change across many countries of the world.

The organization makes available useful training resources for human rights organizations and activists to help them do their work better. WITNESS’ core methodology is “video advocacy”, where the use of video is considered an integrated tool in human rights campaigns. It has trained individuals from more than 80 countries through hands-on workshops and provided video cameras to selected activists and community leaders. Its video sharing website The Hub empowers people to document and publicize unseen atrocities. It also operates an important preservation program through the WITNESS Media Archive.

WITNESS has launched its comprehensive training curriculum on human rights advocacy through video, which is available for download for free. It features 7 modules and 37 individual sessions ranging from 30 minutes to 6 hours long. These modules offer information about how to use videos for human rights advocacy activities, create and present credible stories to support their campaigns, the tricks of videomaking and much more. Included in each session are these downloadable PDFs:

Descriptions of session objectives, and what the participants will learn and experience;
PowerPoint slide decks, which are embedded so you can see the key points and structure of the session.
Facilitator notes which highlight the structure of the session; key points, details on the resources and case studies, and suggested exercises to complete during the session.
Participant notes help guide participants and provide essential information to support the session.
Handouts are incorporated in the session, and also in a workbook for participants.

Screenshot of Video for Change Curriculum

With this curriculum WITNESS seeks to expand the reach of its training programs to large and more diverse group of people, organizations, and networks online and offline. You can see a presentation on the WITNESS Curriculum.

Speak Out Tunisia: Training Citizen Journalists For A Free And Fair Press

Rezwan — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:42:44 +0000

Remember Anne Medley, a photojournalist and videographer based in the United States, who taught multimedia journalism to empower Congolese students?

She also helped out Le PaCTE Tunisien (Pacte des Compétences Tunisiennes Engagées), a Tunisian association to start the Speak Out Tunisia, a citizen journalism training project. After the Tunisian revolution Le PaCTE worked to bring together Tunisians and its supporters to help build a better Tunisia.

In an interview to the NewsMeBack blog Khalil Ghorbal, a Telecommunications engineer and co-founder of the Tunisian PaCTE, presents ‘Speak Out Tunisia':

Speak Out Tunisia is a citizen journalism training project that aims to teach a diverse group of Tunisian citizens about digital media and online journalism. After 23 years of oppression without a free press under Dictator Ben Ali, Speak Out Tunisia seeks to return the power of a free and fair press to the Tunisian people.

Read the interview for more info.

Anne Medley taught the beginners group of citizen journalists in the southern town of Kebili in March. The participants were chosen from 90 applicants. Anne writes in Speak Out Tunisia blog:

On March 19, the Speak Out Tunisia citizen journalism training session for beginners began in Kebili. Since then, my students have impressed me daily with their questions about journalism ethics, issues of bias in the Tunisian press and photojournalism skills.

This is their forum to post their photos, videos and writings. Check them out often!

Click on the image to play video

The second phase of training with the advanced students took place in Tunis. Here in Kickstarter site this update was posted:

The students spent two weeks shooting photo and video stories, learning about journalism ethics, and producing final video projects. The PaCTE team ended the Speak Out Tunisia project on Saturday, April 21 with a closing conference in Tunis on citizen journalism featuring renowned journalists and citizen journalism experts from France and Tunisia.

Students from both the beginner and advanced sessions continue to post their work to www.speakoutunisia.com, so please check often to see their latest photo and video reports.

This video featuring Anne Medley talks about the project.

India: Awaaz.De – Giving Voice To Marginal And Disadvantaged Communities

Rezwan — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:32:57 +0000

In countries like India the internet penetration is low, especially in marginalized communities. It is still a long way for the rural poor to afford proper infrastructure and gain access to the internet. Organizations struggle to reach to these communities isolated geographically, and distanced by local languages. These people usually have low rate of literacy and have limited experience with information technology. However the mobile penetration is high and can be a deal breaker in ICT based development efforts.

Awaaz.de is an innovative software program (voice-XML based Interactive Voice Response system) that allows development organizations to connect with these poor, rural and marginalized communities by providing on-demand, many-to-many information access through mobile phones. People can access Awaaz.De applications by dialing regular phone numbers to work with voice contents through automated voice interfaces. When a farmer calls in, he/she hears audio prompts and is asked to enter a number from the keypad or say a word in order to navigate. Voice applications overcome the language barrier, offering services in local languages and overcome literacy constraints.

Awaaz.De was founded by Neil Patel and Tapan Parikh two years ago. Their first effort was Avaaj Otalo, an open-source, voice-based platform for Gujarati farmers. According to Mobile Active's case study:

Avaaj Otalo provides three modes of functionality. When farmers call in, they can either listen to archives of DSC's weekly radio boradcast, listen to announcements from DSC staff put up specifically for Avaaj Otalo, or participate in the question-answer forum. The archive and announcements are offered for browsing.

According to Center Of Microfinance blog “the project has the potential to go much beyond the purview of agriculture and have positive effects on farmers’ health status as they switch to pesticides which pose lesser health risks”.

Image courtesy AngelList

And rightly so Awaaz.de is also using its voice message board and serving a number of development organization clients across 6 states in India to conduct survey, campaign and other services for the. The services include phone surveys, broadcast messages to wide or targeted audiences, and track usage and reach clients with comprehensive reporting for them. All software are open source and offered as an end-to-end hosted service. Tapan Parikh explains in Ushahidi blog

A web-based dashboard is used by community moderators to curate and categorize user submissions, facilitate sharing of knowledge and disseminate targeted information, while creating a home-grown database of users and local-language voice content. A more detailed description of how Awaaz.De works can be found here.

Here is a video featuring Neil Patel, who is explaining what Awaaz.de does.

Please follow Awaaz.de on Twitter and Facebook.