Rising Voices

Mario Duran, one of the leaders of the Voces Bolivianas team in El Alto, put together this video for the attendees of the 2008 Global Voices Summit in Budapest, Hungary. It’s a great brief reminder of what the Voces Bolivianas project is accomplishing.

ConVerGentes, the San Javier La Loma-based group of young journalists who form part of HiperBarrio, have started a podcast in Spanish. Have a listen to learn more about their community, how it is different from the rest of Medellín, and why they are headed to Campus Party.

SET Director Kevin Wallen and volunteer Caleen Deidritch explain the history, process, and objectives of Prison Diaries, a project which teaches inmates at two of Kingston’s correctional facilities how to portray the realities of life behind bars using blogs and podcasts.

Nari Jibon’s team of bloggers take us on a tour of Dhaka’s slums, describing how it is that Bangladeshis live in some of the very poorest parts of the capital city. Because the sub-titles pass by so quickly, I will transcribe them here.

FOKO blogger and United Nations Club member Patricia exposes pollution at Lake Ankarihary near downtown Antananarivo. The video was submitted to MySpace’s Film Your Issue contest.

Taslima Akter, Sherin Sultana, and fellow bloggers from the Nari Jibon project take us on a tour of Dhaka University during celebrations for the first day of spring.

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.

Juana Tambo is a participant of Voces Bolivianas citizen media outreach project in El Alto, Bolivia. With the help of trainer Mario Duran, she made this video explaining a bit of the history behind El Alto’s largest public market.

In this three-minute podcast recorded with Cristina Quisbert while she was in Miami for the annual We Media conference, we discover the importance of Voces Bolivianas and citizen media in general for the residents of El Alto, Bolivia.

For this week’s Rising Voices podcast we listen in on a live interview with Nari Jibon founder Kathryn Ward from WBDX’s Big Muddy radio program in Carbondale, Illinois. Kathy describes how Nari Jibon got its start and how they’ve been incorporating blogging and citizen media into their English and computer training classes to give women in Dhaka, Bangladesh a stronger voice and community online.