Rising Voices

The Bolivian Voices day on April 19, 2008 was a nationwide effort to train bloggers and bring more people into the global conversation. Approximately 100 Bolivians from ‘underrepresented’ groups took part in a day long workshop in seven cities of Bolivia. Learn more about that day in this week’s feature.

Global Voices is seeking to hire a Public Health Editor. He of she will be responsible for writing weekly articles which cover the latest discussions and topics related to public health and human rights in the developing world from citizen media like blogs, podcasts, and video-blogs.

Within six months FOKO Blog Club’s citizen media outreach project successfully completed workshops in three provinces of Madagaskar and brought more than 30 Malagasy youths into blogging about social issues, producing video reports for competitions and posting photographs. Learn more about their success in this week’s feature.

Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, in collaboration with the Open Society Institute Public Health Program’s Health Media Initiative, is now accepting project proposals for the third round of microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for new media outreach projects focused especially on public health issues involving marginalized populations.

The participants of the Nari Jibon project of Bangladesh continued to portray their culture, lifestyle and unique things to the world with citizen media tools. They celebrated the Bangla new year by participating in a cultural program. Watch the photos and videos and experience Bangladesh.

Shaghayegh Azimi is the epitome of what is often referred to on Global Voices as a “bridge-blogger”; that is, someone who uses their weblog to bridge two or more cultures. There is only one catch - Azimi isn’t really a blogger; her passion, rather, lies in video. Her project, Iran Inside Out, is a window of moving images that will allow those living outside the country to point their video cameras and share their lives with the rest of the world.

The HiperBarrio project in Colombia has taken advantage of the Medellín’s network of library park facilities which include internet rooms to teach the citizen media skills to young people from the working class northern hills. In this week’s feature we will read some of the experiences of the participants to know how these libraries are carrying out a social role to keep the youth engaged in creative citizen media activities.

Online video is revolutionizing how people in the developed world inform themselves and participate in their communities. In the developing world, however, obstacles including slow internet access and a lack of translated tutorials have meant a slow uptake of online video. Rezwan describes how two projects in Bangladesh and India are overcoming the challenges to publish locally produced video online.

On April 19, at eight different sites throughout six Bolivian cities, Voces Bolivianas will host Bolivian Voices Day, a one-day synchronized event that will train dozens of Bolivians how to start their own blogs and participate in both the national and global online conversations. In this podcast with Voces Bolivianas founder, Eduardo Ávila, we hear about the closing ceremony of the workshop series in Santa Cruz as well as why Voces Bolivianas decided to organize a one-day training at various sites around the country.

We have interviewed Denis Kimambo, Program Manager of one of the new Rising Voices grantees, the Youth Media Consultative Forum of REPACTED from Kenya. Through this interview we learn about this interesting project as well as updates of the situation in Kenya after the end of the post election crisis.