“I blog on Africa with joy because I believe it is our individual voices that emerge and mixed African renaissance will happen as surely as the dream of Martin Luther King became reality Forty years later.”

And Théophile did not stop there. With the help of a community of experienced bloggers he went on with his dream to promote Ivorian individuals voices by teaching them how to blog. Based on his idea on arranging a blogcamp in Africa, he had applied for a Rising Voices micro-grant and the project “Abidjan Blog Camps” has been selected as one of the grantees of the latest round.

Skylines of Abidjan

We have discussed with Théophile about the preparations for the Abidjan blog camps:

RV: Who are your target participants? Have you selected them?

Théophile Kouamouo: We are targeting communities that will naturally gain by expressing themselves through the citizen media tools. Artists, craftsmen, who would like to show their talent; activists and associations that would like to plead their cause; the groups of young people who would like to speak. We have not selected them yet. We will invite some of them to share with them about the program, and we will select the most interested communities.

RV: When will the workshop start? What will be taught? Have you prepared the curricula?

Théophile Kouamouo: The workshops will start in one month. We will teach how to create a blog, how to make podcasts (audio and video), how to promote a blog by links and communities like Facebook and Twitter, how to write on a blog more efficiently and how to build a community. We are working on the curricula.

RV: Who will be the trainers? Have you recruited them?

Théophile Kouamouo: Some of them are known, like me, Nadine Tchaptchet-Kouamouo and Israël Yoroba, winner of the BOBS 2008 price of the best blog in French. We are in contact with Etum and Djé and are open to other potential trainers.

RV: Have you selected the venue? What will be the facilities there?

Théophile Kouamouo: Not yet. But we have identified some.

RV: How long will the training continue?

Théophile Kouamouo: Two days by session.

RV: How will you keep the participants motivated?

Théophile Kouamouo: We will be in contact with them by mailings and phoning and we will display their work on our collective blog.

RV: What do you feel that the Ivory Coast bloggers lack?

Théophile Kouamouo: I think that they need to learn how to use some means like podcasts and photos to express themselves. And the local blogosphere needs more diversity.

RV: Do you have any plan to post English translations of you selected contents for the world readers?

Théophile Kouamouo: We will try to translate our best content but we'll need to have some translators working for free.

Feast of Internet in Ivory Coast. Image Courtesy of Israël Yoroba

Israël Yoroba writes about “La Toile d'Or” (Feast of the Internet) in Ivory coast which was held from 27th of April to 1st of May 2009. This year's theme was “what to do with Internet”.

The Abidjan Blog Camps will surely guide Ivorians how to make proper use of Internet and bring them to the blogosphere to initiate a change.

Nari Jibon aims to provide alternative education and skill development programs to the poor and under-privileged women of Dhaka. They teach them Bangla, tailoring, English, computers, ICT and photography among other things. From its website:

Nari Jibon has established a blog in English, titled “Bangladesh from Our View” and Bangla “Amader Katha (Our Stories)” to increase students’ & staffs’ creativity on different areas. Nari Jibon’s blog efforts have resulted in a two year grant from Global/Rising Voices to improve students’ blogging skills, including interviews, photos, and video training.

The Nari Jibon bloggers have so far produced almost 300 posts (both in Bangla and English) in these blogs. In Rising Voices archives you can read features with photos, watch videos and listen to podcasts about the Nari Jibon citizen media outreach project to learn about its progress, its challenges and successes.

We have asked the people behind Nari Jibon, its educators and a participant how was their ride in the world of citizen media during the past one year.

Kazi Rafiqul Islam, Project Director, Nari Jibon

* What were the major challenges of the Nari Jibon Blog project you faced and how did you overcome them?

a. We started our blogging activities with limited resources: a few cameras, an old video camera and our computers did not have the required capacity to do blogging, video posting etc. well.

With the Rising Voices fund we could buy additional digital cameras, video camera and could upgrade our computers and that helped the bloggers and our trainers to continue editing, uploading/posting articles, photo and video etc.

b. One of our biggest challenges was to receive constant and reliable electricity amidst frequent load-shedding (power cuts).

We have bought a powerful UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) with the Rising Voices grant that helped a lot to continue our staff/students blogging activities and also continue their classes on time. We still could not solve the problem completely and we are seeking more funds to buy an additional UPS/IPS.

c. Our computer graphics teacher started the blogging activities and played the main role in setting up both the English and Bangla blog for NJ. But within a few months from the start of the program he left for personal reasons placing us in a difficult position to continue with our blogging activities.

We then asked our computer teacher Taslima Akter to take responsibilities to continue blogging. She had a little knowledge about citizen media tools so she had to work hard (read many journals, Books and practice on videos, photos) to get the things under her control. Later the Rising Voices citizen media guide also helped her a lot. I must say she played a prominent role in continuing and developing our blogging activities.

d. Many Bangladeshi women have limited education and don't have access to computers; especially they are weak in English language.

We have now three English and computer teachers including a visiting English teacher from USA who are trying their best to make the students conversant in English and make them computer literate so that they can give their best efforts in blogging. We also have staff development classes on English language and computers and they are gradually developing in those areas.

e. Some of our students’ guardians started to ask “what is the (monetary) benefit in writing in blog?” “Why they are giving extra time at Nari Jibon in blogging?” etc.

To solve the problem we arranged meetings with the students’ guardians every 3-4 months to describe our students’ blogging activities and highlight our best bloggers. We started awards for best blogs in English and Bangla and given free cyber café passes to our best bloggers that are encouraging others to write in blogs. We made students’ guardians understand that they are not wasting their times. They are increasing their skills through blogging that would help them to make them self-reliant in future.

f. Security was a very big issue as the neighborhood cybercafés are insecure for women. Female staff/students were feeling insecure going out side to interview, to collect information for the blogs.

To solve the problem we are providing a secure space to express their voices/experiences- activism through blogging. We have a equipped cyber café which is only for women where they can practice, brows safely for collecting information to write in the blogs and that are broadening their knowledge and developing skills. We also provide safe transportation and accompany female students during field trips.

* How do you feel about the success of Nari Jibon Blog?

I do not want to say that our blogging project/activities are completely successful but I must say that we are on the right track that might lead us to reach to goals and successes in future. We need to recruit more bloggers, increase community awareness to reach to the goals.

I would say through blogging, our women students have increased knowledge on different blogging software, camera operating, video making, writing skills in English and Bangla and also have increased their level of confidence to communicate with others and to work outside their homes. Now they can go outside to find job, take interview for blogging without fear. Now students’ have increased awareness on their lives, rights, and responsibilities, what to do, how to do and what not do, and how to make their voices heard. They have also learned more about other bloggers and people around the world. In turn, the over 23,000+ readers of our English blog have learned much about Bangladesh: cyclones, culture, songs, favorite places and foods, animals, and issues concerning young women as well as wives and mothers: education, security, violence against women, and prospects for change.

Although some of our staffs have their own blogs but we are yet to arrange setting up students own blogs as some of our senior bloggers had to leave Nari Jibon as they had completed their courses. Some are busy with their job and some can not come due to their exams and they do not have computer of their own or internet connection in their residence. Still we are contacting them and assuring that they have free access to our computers and internet facilities as and when they can come to blog. We do hope that in near future some of our students will be able to set up their own blogs.

Taslima Akter Tama, ICT Educator

* Tell us about your experience in bringing the women of Nari Jibon into blogging.

For the last one year I am training the students on basic of blogging; from the technical part of blog publishing to maintenance, photo, video, developing their personal voices, methods of writings etc.

At the initial stage of our blogging activities we got very few students who were interested to write in blogs and also some others saw it as a burden. But as the time progressed we continued to encourage our students for writings in blog and we emphasized reading other blogs so that they can learn more about blogging, its necessity and importance. We also have made them understand that blogging increase their personal efficiency and develop them in various accepts of their lives; it can change their lives and develop themselves. Blogging can help them move up quickly and it is good for their career and also they can use their free time creatively.

To recruit more bloggers we gradually have incorporated blogging in every course curricula and accordingly we started to give them blog related homework/assignments. So students are submitting their writings as class assignments. After receiving Risings Voices mini grant, we arranged our first workshop on Blogging and invited a Bangladeshi professional blogger Razib Ahmed. Through this workshop our staffs and students have learned many things about blogging and also this workshop encouraged us to go forward with blogging.

We had our second blog workshop with Mr. Shawn Ahmed of the Uncultured project. We learned many new things like photo and video blogging. This workshop encouraged our students and staff about doing video and photo blogging. To get our students more involved in blogging we also started awards for best bloggers in English and Bangla that made the students interested to blog. We also got to know much about Flickr account, face book, photo blogging and benefit of blogging etc from Ms. Kira Karikar who is a Venezuelan journalist/blogger. Rising Voices citizen media guide played an important role in recruiting students’ bloggers, training on blogging etc.

* You have been instrumental in providing these students a powerful tool for self expression. How did you break their shyness and minimized their frustrations? Do they cherish this voice?

It is true that students were feeling shy to write and submit their writings on different topics. They were confused whether their writings are ok, what the readers will think or comment reading their writings etc. and for that reason we hardly get their writings. For example Mony didn’t want to sing in front of camera. She felt embarrassed but I encouraged her to sing. When she got good response from readers like David, Kathy and others she was very happy. That made her more confident to go forward that we have seen in her role in our pohela boishakh (Bangla New Year) program. In my “first day of spring” video Sherin Sultana and Mahfuza Parul hesitated to stand front of camera and then I insisted them to imitate journalists taking interview for TV news. Finally they did it and received good response from readers/viewers. Now they are not afraid of raising their voices that we have seen in the drama where they acted on Pohela Boishakh celebration program, which will be posted soon.

I am trying my best to express/share my thoughts, experience and knowledge with my students/ bloggers so that they can change their attitude, get rid from shyness and frustrations. I always listen to our students problems, thoughts etc. carefully and answer their all queries to improve their blogging skills. We assure that their mistakes in writings will be edited before posting. Seeing some of our students successfully writings in our blog site most of other students became interested to write in the blogs. Now they are confident in writing, taking interview, creating ideas for blog etc.

Mohtarimun Nahar [Bipa], Supervisor of English Section & Editing

* What did you learn from blogging?

Now I know what Blog is and how to post articles because I have my own blog. I also think I have improved my English and Computer skills from Blogging.

Whenever I go to anywhere I try to capture natural beauties on my camera. I want to share my thoughts and memories with the readers through Blog which I didn't do before.

Md. Golam Rabbany (Sujan), Research and Field operation Lead of Nari Jibon

* Do you think that bogs can be a powerful tool in raising concerns and awareness among Bangladeshis regarding the anomalies in the society you portray in your blog?

I think blogs can be a powerful tool in raising concerns and awareness among Bangladeshis regarding these issues. But it is also true that still now most of the educated people in Bangladesh are ignorant about blogs. Very few people get the scope to browse Web Pages because internet connection is not widely available in our country till now. But the internet usage is increasing day by day and we can hope that within a few years a large number of people will be introduced to blogs and blogging. And then blogs will be a powerful tool in our country.

Firoza Begum Poly - Student/Blogger

* Tell us about your happiest moments in blogging?

I went to the Ekushey Book Fair 2008 and submitted a post on the fair. There I met some writers. It was my happiest moment.

* Do you get comment from the readers about your writing?

Yes, I got encouragement and good comments from the readers.

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. As a former film producer in Iran, video has always been her preferred medium of expression. And she's not alone. In an interview over Skype, Azimi says that thousands of Iranian youth yearn to become filmmakers, but that limited access to equipment, along with Iran's few channels of distribution, mean that only the very best, luckiest, or most well-connected are able to share their creative works with a national audience. At Iran's Short Film Festival, only a select few of the hundreds of submissions by aspiring filmmakers are shown. What about all the others? I asked Azimi.

“They're never seen outside a small group of friends and family.”

All across the world, the rules of filmmaking - especially documentary filmmaking - are changing. What used to require outlandishly expensive audio, video, and editing equipment is now possible with a laptop computer and thousand dollar video camera. In addition to changes in production, new methods of distribution have also lowered the barriers to entry for up-and-coming filmmakers. The success of internet shows like Ask a Ninja, Rocketboom, and Alive in Baghdad show that video isn't just the future of the internet - it's already here.

So if hundreds of mostly young Iranian filmmakers are already using video to show the reality of Iran as they see it, and if millions of broadband-connected youth around the world are scouring the internet for new video, then why have those two groups not yet found each other?

Probably because they've never been introduced. Which is where Shaghayegh Azimi is now playing such an important role. With the help of a Rising Voices microgrant, she will explain to Iranian filmmakers how they can use videoblogs to distribute their short films and documentaries to an international audience. Once the videos are available online, Azimi will also see to it that they are sub-titled in English (and other languages) and distributed widely via popular video-sharing networks.

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. On her project blog, Shaghayegh describes some of what we can soon look forward to, including a snapshot of the underground heavy metal scene in Iran and a personal reflection of what a US-Iran war would mean to the life of a single filmmaker.

Shaghayegh herself grew up an equal amount of time in both the United States and Iran and says she spent a good deal of her formative years defending each of her two homes to the residents of the other. The major difference, she notes, is that while nearly all Iranians are informed about the latest cultural and political developments in the United States, many Americans can't even locate Iran on a map.

The internet is a global village, but only if we choose for it to be. Shaghayegh Azimi is holding her hand out, waiting to introduce you to some new neighbors. Why not take the initiative and introduce yourself?

But what we are talking about here is completely different from all of the above.

Rising Voices second round grantee Prison Diaries, based in Jamaica, will use citizen media tools like blogs, video and podcasts to share the daily journals of prison inmates, allowing all Jamaicans to learn about the realities of Jamaica’s overcrowded prison system with the hope that this will help counteract false ideas generated by the mainstream media.

(Image: CrimsonNinjagirl from Flickr -used under creative commons license)

It all started in 1999 with the S.E.T. Foundation, an inmate driven transformative program that has been successfully reducing the rate of recidivism in Jamaica’s prisons through reform of Jamaican society at its most grassroots level. Through S.E.T., the inmate becomes a constructive player who can contribute meaningfully to society, while the community, in turn, gains a new citizen who can contribute to the process of restorative transformation and economic growth.

Its leader Kevin Wallen describing his vision, writes, “I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them I found myself in hell and this is what it looked like, this is what I saw. In order for us to turn this back into the paradise it is is not difficult at all, it’s simply all for one and one for all.”

Kevin Wallen has been doing notable work using motivational workshops within the penal institutions. Jamaica's law and order situation has deteriorated in recent times and it has been branded internationally as the ‘murder capital of the world.’

Kevin points out the goal of the Prison Diaries project:

Much of Jamaica’s culture of crime has been blamed on the popular veneration of gang leaders. The project will attempt to confront this ‘badboy veneration' by training current prison inmates to blog and podcast.

In their introductory post on the Rising Voices project blog for Prison Diaries Kevin writes:

The S.E.T. Prison Diaries project will allow inmates and ex-inmates to tell their stories so that a greater understanding of the experiences, social and economic conditions which compel them to engage in criminal activities can be recorded and utilized as an authoritative source for studying criminology and designing rehabilitative programs regionally and internationally.

The inmates will primarily generate their own content with the training they have received through the S.E.T program. They will record and edit audio and video clips and these will be uploaded to our blog and accessed by the general public.

More ideas are coming up from the Prison Diaries team:

For those persons who have told their stories on paper and may not want to do a audio or video interview, we have decided to do dramatic readings of their stories which the inmates themselves will edit using the skills they have learnt.

You can learn more about the Prison Diaries project from their recently published press release. Already a few stories have been recorded and will be published soon. We are eager to read the diaries of the inmates. Please keep an eye on the Prison Diaries Blog or subscribe to its RSS feed.

On YouTube, there is an 11-minute video of the veterinarian-assisted birth of a calf on a farm in Villa Cardal, Uruguay, a small town in a dairy-rich region four hours north of the capital, Montevideo. It’s an amazing thing to watch—at least, to a city slicker like me who doesn’t get to witness the miracle of birth every day. But what makes this particular video remarkable is that it was shot by a fourth-year student at Villa Cardal’s Public School 24, using the built-in camera and recording software on the student’s XO Laptop, within weeks of the machine’s arrival at the school last year.

Wade Roush 2/1/08

Perhaps just as amazing is that the low-production (that is, zero-production) video has already been viewed by nearly 40,000 individuals. How did a lower-middle class rural Uruguayan fourth-grader learn to take video of a cow giving birth and share it with so many people across the globe?.

Villa Cardal is a rural town of around 1,300 residents in the department of Florida, Uruguay. Last May it became the unlikely destination for dozens of technology correspondents from major media outlets around the world after the One Laptop Per Child project chose it as a testing site for for their XO computer, formerly called the $100 laptop. (Each laptop actually cost the Uruguayan government $205.)

You can get to know Villa Cardal better in Google Earth or, to a lesser degree, with Google Maps. You can also check out many photographs of the town which were taken by students in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade using their XO laptops. I am personally a fan of this photograph as I tend to make the same face when staring into a webcam.

Rising Voices grantee Pablo Flores, who is the technical and educational coordinator for OLPC's implementation in Villa Cardal and throughout the province of Florida, has also posted some interesting videos of Villa Cardal and the young students using their XO laptops on his YouTube page.

During the OLPC's pilot project in Villa Cardal, the Uruguayan government was also testing out the Intel's Classmate PC. In early October, after intense negotiations which brought the XO laptop down to $205 compared to the Classmate PC's price tag of $258, the Uruguayan government ordered 100,000 XO laptops with an option to buy 50,000 more at $199 per unit.

Two months later and the first non-pilot deployment of XO laptops was launched at Escuela No. 109 in rural Florida. The laptops in Villa Cardal were also replaced with new XOs with updated hardware and software. The OLPC project in general, and its first deployment in the Uruguayan province of Florida specifically, have both attracted a good deal of international criticism. The most common critique is that the $205 per student would better used elsewhere; for example, on the renovation of shoddy schoolhouses, the purchase of textbooks, or the salaries of underpaid teachers. Another common criticism is that the laptops won't be effectively used by teachers, who will probably have a more difficult time than their students in adapting to the new technology.

For those interested in how those criticisms specifically applied to the 6 month pilot phase of the OLPC project in Villa Cardal, you could do no better than reading “Reflections on a Pilot OLPC Experience in Uruguay” by Juan Pablo Hourcade, Daiana Beitler, Fernando Cormenzana, and Pablo Flores. The paper is largely optimistic, but its authors do note that:

While the Uruguayan government is making a great effort in providing funding for the hardware, there is no funding for designing and developing software and content for use with the laptops. We are interested in developing technology to help setup and facilitate partnerships between local communities, schools (children and teachers), software developers and funding sources to foster the user-centered design, development and evaluation of open source software and open content for the XO laptops.

Another excellent resource for frank feedback about the value and challenges that those lime green laptops brought to Villa Cardal comes straight from the students' parents and teachers. Again, we mostly encounter gratitude and optimism, but parents do note that the laptops have been the cause of some arguments between siblings while teachers observe that some of the students become distracted in class by focusing more on their computers than the classroom activity. Flores also writes, “The phrase ‘… and we are waiting for Internet' was repeated by most of the parents. Teachers also had some difficulties with Internet, because apparently not all the time there's good connectivity inside the school.”

What kind of content are the young students producing with their laptops? Much more, it turns out, than just videos of birthing cows. You can find out yourself by taking a look at the classroom blogs for grades one, two, three, four, five, and six at Villa Cardal's Escuela Italia. (As the new semester has just started, most of the blogs have not been updated since before the holiday vacation.)

For Pablo Flores the XO laptops are much more than an educational tool; they are also an important communication device which he hopes will allow all Uruguayan students to be heard by the rest of their country and participate in the online conversations which will affect their future. Flores' Rising Voices project, Bloggers Desde la Infancia or “Growing Up Blogging” will organize four series of workshops in strategic rural locations throughout Uruguay. These gatherings will bring the young XO-toting students and their teachers together with national and international veteran bloggers, podcasters, and producers of online video. They will go over intermediate and advanced blogging techniques, how to add meta information to the photographs they upload to the web, how to create conversational video threads using YouTube responses, and much more.

As Flores wrote on his project proposal [es]:

Creemos que hay una enorme potencialidad de extraer información rica desde todos los rincones del país, involucrando a los maestros, los niños y sus familias. Esto brindará una gran riqueza de visiones sobre las noticias, la cultura, el quehacer y todas las expresiones de la realidad desde todos los rincones del país. Es una oportunidad para promover la real integración del país a la sociedad de la información. Creemos también que la experiencia de Uruguay puede servir de referencia para otros países que estén impulsando modelos educativos de un computador por niño (1:1).

Obviously, before organizing the participatory media workshops, Flores is first overseeing the complete distribution of the laptops in rural schools throughout Florida and the rest of Uruguay. He says the series of workshops will likely take place throughout July and October, though that many of the OLPC schools will have their own classroom blogs before then.

I will be visiting Villa Cardal and many of the other OLPC deployments in Uruguay throughout the month of April. We'll make sure to bring Rising Voices readers more updates and videos as the months go on.

FOKO was born a few days after TED Global conference: “Africa the next Chapter”, when TED Fellow Andriankoto and his fellow bloggers Mialy, Lova, and Joan decided to push further their cyber-activism by banking on their talents with the FOKO project to contribute ideas that will support Madagascar’s development.

Rather than the Malagasy people and culture, it is most often the biodiversity and famous lemurs of Madagascar which take the international spotlight. FOKO wants to shift the focus to the Malagasy people and make them a crucial factor in their unique and threatened environment. Their goal is to focus on one village (Kelilalina) in the Southeastern region of Madagascar, with one of their goals being to help save their forests.

Foko has many diversified projects and one of them is the Foko Blog Club, which started last August to teach blogging skills to young people in Madagascar. In a society where elders are given preference, people are not used to listening to the younger generation, although they represent 75% of the population. Foko wants to encourage more Malagasy youngsters to share their stories and integrate blogging into their educational and professional development. FOKO also hosted the Best of Malagasy Blogs competition contest in November 2007 and organizes monthly blogger meetups. Meet the club team members here.

Malagasy internet users are predominantly users of different online forums where they raise their voices fairly independently but while being comfortably supported by the online community. Serasera is a popular Malagasy-language discussion forum based in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar with over 400 active members. FOKO Blog club with the help of the Rising Voices Micro grant will outreach to this active community of internet forumists and teach them how to participate in the global community of blogs, podcasts, and online video and thus enabling them to engage in the global conversation.

In their project proposal submitted to Rising Voices, they emphasized:

Twice a month, we will have sessions with a group of forumists. They are actually very internet savvy but for lack of connectivity (costly, slow and subject to electricity outage) they are not blogging and think the Internet is reduced to chat forums. Most of the forums are held in Madagascar, we want to expand outside of the Malagasy forum world and reach out worldwide.

FOKO's projects goals are:

Promoting citizen journalism in Madagascar specifically by encouraging forumists to write blog posts.

Using digital media as a tool for educational purposes for students.

Promoting the use of digital media for educational purposes by students who do not have regular access to the internet.

On January 26, the Foko Blog Club arranged their first workshop of the year (4^th of its kind) in the cyber cafe Teknet in Antananarivo to introduce blogging to the participants. In the FOKO project blog on Rising Voices Joan Razafimaharo shares the challenges in achieving their goal:

The idea of publishing ideas on one’s own and taking a personal position on each post could have understandably scared some of them. Our team did their best to make them feel at ease and showed them the basics of blogging in each session.

“Pro” Malagasy bloggers also showed up to help out with logistics and at the same time other overseas-based bloggers connected on the chatroom and offered support and tips.

And soon all were witnessing the results:

It took only one hour for the first posts to start showing up. FOKO members had not even yet mentioned Citizen Journalism and the Rising Voices tutorials translated into French (and soon in Malagasy) that spontaneously all the blogs showed they had caught on the spirit of what it means to rise ones’ voices :

13 year-old FCandy very wisely posts about the latest news from her Ambohimanarina popular neighborhood.

Hard working Sasa tells us funny stories about people she meets everyday on her way home .

Stunningly Avylavitra showcases pictures of the impact of last week’s FAME cyclone which did many destructions in town …

Some issues were raised : Blanche07 explained how difficult it was to find Internet connection, Pakysse wanted to learn how to embed sounds and videos into posts, and 10-year-old Miora Stéphanie needed more time. Many more bloggers-to-be were waiting for their turn in the hallway.”

Read all the details on Rising Voices and bookmark the page (or rss feed) to receive more updates in the future. Check the sidebar of their project blog for links to the participants’ blogs, member feeds, tutorials, albums, chatrooms etc.

The FOKO facebook group already has 200+ members and the initiative was recently featured in Blog Her .

FOKO is soon expanding to Madagascar's second biggest town, Tamatave. It will now host two blogging sessions per month instead of one and more friends from the Namana Serasera group will attend the workshops to facilitate. We will be following this unique project and see how it brings about changes.

In total we received 63 project proposals from over 35 different countries. Although the quantity of applications was less than the 142 we received in July, the quality and innovation that stood out throughout all of this round's proposals made the selection process far more difficult. The overwhelming response to the latest Rising Voices grant competition is, once again, a testament to the global enthusiasm for citizen media from rural Uganda to Orthodox communities in Israel, from the mountains of Guatemala to the working class neighborhoods of Serbia.

The five grant winners are representative of the innovation, purpose and good will that Rising Voices aims to support.

Youth Media Consultative Forum in Nakuru, Kenya

Dennis Kimambo, Collins Oudour, and the rest of the REPACTED team will train residents living on the outskirts of Nakuru, Kenya to collect local news and stories and share them with an international audience through the use of photography, blogging, video, and a local print magazine. REPACTED will continue its use of Magnet Theater to encourage participants to openly discuss taboo topics like HIV transmission. You can read REPACTED's full proposal on the wiki.

Iran Inside Out: A Videoblogging Initiative

Shaghayegh Azimi and fellow veteran Iranian videobloggers will partner with the Tehran-based Young Cinema Society to identify aspiring young filmmakers and teach them the skills to both produce compelling short videos and publish them online. In her proposal Shaghayegh writes, “the two most important goals we hope to accomplish are 1) to introduce and inspire Iranian youth of underrepresented communities to engage in interaction with the global online community and especially the videoblogging community and 2) to educate and inspire tolerance of Iran through human stories.” You can see examples of Shaghayegh's previous work on PBS's Frontline/World website.

Bloggers Desde la Infancia (Bloggers Since Infancy) - Uruguay

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project created by faculty members of the MIT Media Lab has received an enormous amount of international media attention as it tries to realize the goal of equipping every student across the world with a laptop computer. But, for the most part, we still have yet to see how young students in Uruguay, Peru, Nigeria, and beyond will use the small, neon-green laptops. Pablo Flores of Ceibal, the governmental organization in charge of distributing OLPC laptops in Uruguay, will organize a series of workshops which will gather national and international bloggers with the young laptop-toting students to show them how to set up a blog and take advantage of other social media tools. Later on, award ceremonies will provide incentives to the new bloggers to share their community stories both locally and internationally. Pablo's full proposal is available (in Spanish) on the wiki.

Bringing Malagasy Forumists to the World of Citizen Journalism - Madagascar

Serasera is a popular Malagasy-language discussion forum based in Antananarivo, Madagascar with over 400 active members. Mialy Andriamananjara, Lova Rakotomalala, Harijanka and other members of the Foko Madagascar team will outreach to this active community of internet forumists and teach them how to participate in the global community of blogs, podcasts, and online video. In their proposal, they emphasize that the project will give the participants “a voice and a digital imprint in the world … Also it is a way for the world to have a glimpse of Malagasy ideas, work and perspective on the world.”

Diary of an Inmate - Jamaica

As project founder Kevin Wallen points out, “over the last two years, Jamaica with a population of 2.6 million, has been branded internationally as the ‘murder capital of the world.' Already, 2007 has racked up a murder rate of over 1,400 individuals.” Much of Jamaica's culture of crime has been blamed on the popular veneration of gang leaders. The Diary of an Inmate project will attempt to confront this ‘badboy veneration” by training current prison inmates to blog and podcast. As Kevin describes the goals of project: “Through blogging, inmates will be able to tell their stories. They will be able to paint a realistic picture of life behind bars and the consequences of crime. Currently, Jamaica’s music and media idolize the ‘badman' or 'shotta' and portray as role models those who have been incarcerated. Many of our youths now think that prison is a ‘cool' place to be, until they themselves are faced with the harsh truth. The Diary of an Inmate blog will allow all Jamaicans to learn about the realities of Jamaica’s overcrowded prison system with the hope that this will counteract the false ideas implanted by the media.”

We are thrilled to welcome these five new projects to the ever-expanding and maturing community of Rising Voices citizen media activists.

Kalam is a 3 year old project to discover young people from marginalized communities in Kolkata as creative writers and critical thinkers and instigate their cultural consciousness. It is a movement for young people to claim their right over their lives by rewriting their own stories, their communities, and their world according to how they see it. Its manifesto emphasizes:

“We must talk about ourselves in our own words, on our own terms. Poems and stories of our lives will now be written, and we will write them ourselves. And we will share our poems and stories with everyone.”

The word Kalam (ka-lum) exists in six languages [Hindi, Urdu, Bangla, Nepali, Farsi, Arabic] and it means a pen or pencil or an instrument to write. It is the perfect title of this commendable initiative for the multilingual community in Kolkata. They’ve already made notable works and produced content using print to encourage creativity and self-expression with poetry and creative writing.

But now, affordable, online technology can help Kalam achieve its goals better.

A Rising Voices micro grant helped them establish “Neighborhood Diaries”, which trains underprivileged youth living in Kolkata’s slums to be citizen journalists. They will conduct workshops on critical thinking, journalistic writing, audio-visual media and new media technologies like blogs, podcasts etc. According to its project proposal:

“ND will benefit the target community — youth slum dwellers (child laborers, children of sex workers, and low-income school-going youth) — by mobilizing them to think and write about their personal and community stories, issues, and histories, as an integral and vibrant part of the socio-cultural fabric of urban India and publish them on blogs accessible to the globe. This program and practice will foster dignity within communities often viewed as powerless, illiterate, and culturally impoverished.”

Meet the people behind Neighborhood Diaries (and Kalam): Bishan Sammadar, Harleen, Sahar Romani, Rohini, and Maitrayee (picture above from left to right).

The team of educators includes Urbi Bhadhuri and Bina Dalui who were chosen from a time-consuming selection process.

We are glad to announce that after the long process of setting up the infrastructure from staff, to partners, to neighborhoods, finally Neighbourhood Diairies started its 15-week workshop series. The workshop commenced on November 26, 2007 in partnership with the local NGO, Sanlaap taking place at Bow Bazaar High School in Kolkata. The participants were 15 youth residents of the area recruited by Sanlaap, a non-profit organization which helps sexually abused female children in the red light areas of Kolkata, South and North 24 Paraganas with youth shelters and vocational training. It has an integrated child development program in the red light areas of Kolkata as well as a support group for women in prostitution.

Read about the participants, the Bow Bazaar Neighbourhood Journalists, a vibrant group of growing teenagers with great spirit and enthusiasm here.

The first session put a series of questions to the participants:

“Just like we’ve realized the false/fragmented/skewed stories around different neighborhoods, how do you think other people think or imagine your personal neighborhood? What are the stereotypes surrounding your neighborhood?”

“Do you think it is important to tell the stories of this neighborhood as an insider and resident?”

The participants responded:

The group was amused at how “problems” were the first thing they are asked about Bow Bazaar from outsiders since they live in a red light area. The concluding activity of this introductory session involved the participants to remember the forgotten or ignored stories of their neighborhood and write a brief story/vignette. The stories ranged from incidents of evictions of old neighbors, adolescent love in the back drop of a chai (tea) stall, a girl in the neighborhood being forced into sex work, a heroic brother who pays for his sister’s education and sends her back to school, and a football tournament lost due to a leg injury.

The second day at Bow Bazaar involved filling out profiles of participants, creating personal maps of themselves and of Bow Bazaar.

The day three proceedings included observations and invoking sensory perceptions (sound, smell, light, touch) of Bow Bazaar among the participants. They were also asked to choose a landmark of the locality and describe why it was important for them.

At the end of the day three sessions the participants were able to create interesting postcard vignettes such as this one:

Bow Bazaar Means…

The sound of conversations from the road leading home,
The smell of alcohol,
Bow Bazaar means the sight of fallen, drunk man on the stairs.
Bow Bazaar means feeling coolness on the rooftop of my home.

By Pooja Dolui, Age 13

Please keep an eye on the Diaries Blog (or subscribe to its feed) for more updates from this unique project.

It is now time to focus our sights on El Alto, Bolivia which, at 4150 meters (13,615 feet) above sea level, is one of the highest cities in the world. It is also one of the poorest. Among young Bolivians today, El Alto is best known as the epicenter of the 2003 - 2005 Bolivian Gas War, which intermittently blocked access to the international airport, as well to oil and gas supplies. The movement likely played a role in the election of current president, Evo Morales, who campaigned heavily on his promise to nationalize the country's vast natural gas reserves.

The role of El Alto's activists have, however, given rise to a common stereotype that the mountainside suburb of La Paz is an outpost of communist rabble-rousers and little else. The portrayal of El Alto in both the English and Spanish-language mainstream media is almost always highly politicized.

The goal of Voces Bolivianas is to leave stereotypes behind and offer Alteños a chance to tell their own tales. As the project's About Page explains:

Voces Bolivianas is a participatory citizen’s media project that promotes the use of ICT (Internet and Communication Technologies) to allow Bolivians especially from underrepresented groups to share their stories about their lives and communities, thus deciding how they are represented.

On their Rising Voices project blog, Eduardo Ávila, Hugo Miranda, and Mario Duran have documented how they prepared for their successful outreach endeavour. After finding a suitable internet cafe and passing out flyers at Universidad Publica de El Alto to recruit participants, they got straight to work and held their first hands-on workshop on September 22.

In all, 23 eager participants showed up. You can visit each and every one of their blogs at the Voces Bolivianas El Alto aggregator.

Taking into account that 79% of El Alto's residents are Aymara, the Voces Bolivianas team was intent on finding a translator who was willing to translate select posts from Spanish into Aymara. Their efforts led them to Dora Romero, a full-time student and part-time translator at El Alto's Public University. The result? The first-ever Aymara-language weblog.

In addition to the group aggregator, some of the most interesting posts are also featured on the main page of the Voces Bolivianas site. Those featured posts are then translated into English and Aymara.

In the follow-up to this post we'll take a closer look at some of those featured posts and how Alteños choose to describe their own lives, their own community.

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In today's podcast we speak with:

• Hector Aristizabal, Director of the ImaginAction theater group.
• Juliana Rincon, co-founder of HiperBarrio.
• Jorge Montoya, co-founder of HiperBarrio.
• Alvaro Ramirez, Associate professor of social communication at the University of Bergen and co-founder of HiperBarrio.
• Carlos Velasquez, Global Voices' Colombia author.

The background music is “Revolve” by hisboyelroy. It is available at ccMixter under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sampling Plus license.

You can learn more about HiperBarrio by visiting their space on the Rising Voices wiki. If you understand Spanish, you can visit the participant blogs from the workshops in Santo Domingo and La Loma San Javier. Alvaro Ramirez has a great summary of posts from participant blogs in the Convergente workshop, which is also in La Loma.

In the coming weeks we'll translate material from all of these blogs into English and post it here on Global Voices.

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