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FOKO: Reporting The Truth Without Fear

FOKO bloggers continues to be at the forefront of the coverage of the current political crisis in Madagascar overcoming the challenges of costly internet connections. Many of them are taking up micro-blogging (Twitter) as an easy and cost effective alternative and using Facebook to communicate between the fellow bloggers. Now everybody's concern is the safety of these citizen journalists in this increasingly tense political environment. But these fearless bloggers are defiant because they feel that reporting the truth to the world is very important as the mainstream media is very biased.

FOKO: Ushahidi Comes To Madagascar

Rising Voices grantee FOKO’s members were at the forefront of the recent coverage of Tropical Storm Eric, Cyclone Fanele, and the recent protests and political turmoil in Madagascar by local citizen journalists of Madagascar. While bloggers from the capital Antananarivo are still actively reporting on the events happening on different key spots of the capital, FOKO Madagascar has introduced the Ushahidi engine, the powerful citizen media platform to report the crisis. Using SMS and web the silent majority of the citizens of Madagascar will record a detailed factual and location based report of the crisis in the country (political or environmental) in FOKO Ushahidi, which will plot them on a map.

Protests in Madagascar and the Importance of Citizen Journalism Training

The recent coverage of Tropical Storm Eric, Cyclone Fanele, and the ongoing protests and political turmoil in Madagascar by local citizen journalists reveals the importance of 1.) citizen journalism training programs, 2.) the translation and contextualization of local content for a global audience, and 3.) networks of media groups so that local voices can be amplified and understood when breaking news hits.

FOKO: A New Year Begins

So far FOKO Blog Club, the Rising Voices grantee from Madagascar has completed 13 workshops in 4 locations in Madagascar. And what a year it was as most of the growth happened in 2008. 2009 will be a new year for Foko as blogger-members are slowly taking over charge from the coordinators and facilitators to take the project forward.

FOKO: Growing Strong As A Connected Community

It was an eventful October for the Rising Voices grantee FOKO Blog Club (FBC) project in Madagascar. With the help of FOKO bloggers many participants at the 'Madagascar barcamp' and the 'E-Bit youth day ICT event' learned about digital literacy and citizen media. FOKO bloggers are now taking charge of the outreach activities with a inspired community feeling and FOKO is soon spreading to more parts of Madagascar.

Pati Rakotomalala on the need to listen to the youth

Pati Rakotomalala represented FOKO Madagascar at this year's Interdependence Day in Brussels, Belgium about the importance of listening to youth. Pati later gave a presentation about her experience in Brussels at Madagascar's first-ever Barcamp.

Blog Action Day: Poverty and citizen media

On the eve of the Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty Rising Voices discusses how citizen media can raise awareness and initiate actions to eradicate poverty.

FOKO: A successful Barcamp in Madagascar

A BarCamp was held in Madagascar on October 4, 2008 in the capital Antananarivo. Organized by the Rising Voices Grantee FOKO it was the first event of such kind in Madagascar.

FOKO Puts Madagascar on the Map

Madagascar, the world's fourth largest island, is much more than a Disney movie. By training Malagasy bloggers how to publish online and interact with the wider world of Web 2.0, Foko is helping put Madagascar on the map.

Creativity Leads to Sustainability

Rising Voices microgrants provide citizen media training projects in the developing world with just enough funding to get off the ground. Many of these projects, however, have become so successful that they are now attracting the interest of more local community members who want to learn how to communicate effectively online. In order to continue their training workshops and outreach activities, they have had to come up with creative strategies for financial sustainability.