Historically, libraries have been characterized as spaces for the free access to knowledge in the fields of literature, art, and culture, as well as becoming gathering places for the community. In this spirit, two years ago the Public Pilot Library of Medellín, Colombia at the La Loma site welcomed the participants of Hiperbarrio [es], one of the initial Rising Voices projects, where citizen journalism workshops have been taking place.

Photo of La Loma Library by Convergentes and used with permission. Click on photo to see a larger version of photo.

It is noteworthy that this library was created more than 50 years ago, as an initiative of the residents of La Loma, and throughout its service to the community it has offered classes in literature, painting, and music. The importance of its social role was described by Rezwan at the Rising Voices blog, who notes that that librarian's responsibility goes beyond the simple lending of books.

It is with those reasons that there were united voices of indignation surrounding the events that took place on October 13, which is described by @blueandtanit:

Ladrones robaron el equipo administrativo con información de La Loma, caja menor y El nica de Hiperbarrio en un asalto a la bpp de La Loma.

The director of Hiperbarrio, Álvaro Ramírez described his reaction upon hearing the news. He writes about the consequences of the robbery in his blog Ojo al Texto [es]:

Estoy un poco aturdido. Me concentro y trato de visualizar la modesta y hermosa Biblioteca de La Loma, sus estantes, las mesas y las sillas donde niños y grandes se sientan a diario a leer, a consultar libros, y a conversar.

Alcanzo a imaginar los computadores apagados y en la noche. Un par de intrusos llegan y logran penetrar por el techo. Entran con linternas y comienzan a sacar cosas

(…)

A la mañana siguiente llegan Gabriel Jaime y los otros empleados y encuentran el desastre. Un robo consumado. Un asalto a la comunidad de La Loma y un golpe duro para la Biblioteca Pública Piloto que ha venido dotando, con gran voluntad y paciencia a la filial más antigua de su extendida red de bibliotecas públicas: es decir gratuitas y abiertas para que todos podamos acceder a sus servicios.

(…)

Pienso en el daño que eso representa. En las personas que se van a perjudicar por no poder acceder gratis a los computadores.

Photo of La Loma library by blueandtanit and used under a Creative Commons license. Click on photo to see a larger version of the photo.

News of the robbery soon spread throughout different online networks, and the community also received notes from those who expressed their solidarity during the incident, showing that there is a strong network across the internet. For example, from Chile, Enzo Abbagliati sent a message of support on his blog Cadaunadas [es] after reading the post written by Ramírez:

Cadaunadas varias veces ha sido espacio para la alegría que desde una barriada de Medellín hemos recibido cotidianamente quienes creemos en las bibliotecas públicas como espacio de equidad y construcción de sociedades más democráticas. Reproduzco ahora una triste nota publicada por Álvaro Ramírez en ConVerGentes, quien desde el aturdimiento inicial nos avisa que han robado en la Biblioteca de La Loma. En Chile, en nuestras bibliotecas públicas, a veces sufrimos la misma suerte, la misma frustrante suerte.

¡Animo, amigos de La Loma! Sé que la comunidad estará con ustedes.

Locally, the Colombian digital magazine Equinoxio [es] became one of the first sites to publish news about the acts of vandalism and wrote about the efforts to investigate the crime:

El director de la biblioteca se reunió con las autoridades y con efectivos de la Policía Nacional a fin de coordinar esfuerzos para recuperar los bienes que se llevaron los asaltantes y capturar a los responsables.

Fortunately, the Golden Nicca prize was recovered, as it was found nearby, but the other objects remain missing. A member of Hiperbarrio, Catalina Urquijo of the blog $ujetate (Unknown II) [es] thanked those who sent messages through the different social networking sites:

Ofrecemos nuestros más sinceros agradecimientos a todos aquellos que nos acompañaron por diversos sitios de la red dándonos su apoyo tanto cuando creímos que nos habían robado el nica como ahora.

Finally, Libary Coordinator Gabriel Vanegas of the blog Esas Voces que Nos Llegan [es] summarizes the shock in which, as a public employee, he had to find out about the incident:

Duele ver la ignorancia de quienes perpetúan este delito contra el patrimonio de la comunidad, pero preocupa pensar en quienes dieron la orden de hacerlo y quienes sabiendo y viendo que se hacia no procedieron de manera correcta y oportuna ante las autoridades.

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It is always easier to criticize than to get involved and one of the criticisms we hear most often at Rising Voices is that helping under-represented communities join the online global conversation will inevitably lead to their westernization. Álvaro Ramírez and Diego Gomez, co-founders of the HiperBarrio project, addressed this question while they were in Austria to pick up their Golden Nica award.

Transcript:

Are these kids getting very Americanized because of the internet? Now they finally have access to it on a daily basis from the library, or from a home connection.

Yes and no. In the group - when we created it - there were already four or five tribes. There were hip-hoppers, punks … and this is music that is not from La Loma, not from Colombia. Cumbia and Merengue and other things are in Colombia. But what happens is that they appropriate. One thing that they do is - the hip-hop that is done in La Loma is in Spanish and it talks about their realities. They adapt it to their needs. It's not the same Americanized version - it's their version of it.

A good example of what is happening on the other hand … is how Cati Restrepo through learning English on LiveMocha has begun to make friends. And she was telling me one night how she has a very good friend in Pakistan now and they talk a lot, and they practice English between the two and actually she is influencing this guy a lot. Because he can not understand that a woman like her is going out so much, is blogging, is not praying all the time … how come she's playing the violin, which is a profane instrument. So actually she is influencing other people. in other areas of the world. And she's getting influenced by him too. He's telling her about Muslim culture about how they pray. So she's learning about this guy too.

So I think that in that sense it's quite interesting because they also are not communicating necessarily with the big stars. Now they are communicating with regular people. I think that in this project especially they have been influenced not just by Americans they now begin to think about India, Dubai, and other cultures that they didn't know existed before. Or they didn't have much reference. With the guys in Voces Bolivianas sometimes. At least they read sometimes Foko Madagascar too. They get a hint of what is going on in Bangladesh. They have heard them singing. We can not understand it, but we think it's beautiful the way they sing in Bangladesh. So, it's both ways. And I think that they decide. They have the possibility to decide much more now. Before with the big television channels and the big enterprises … they were the ones deciding what we had to hear in Colombia in a way. And now the kids have a menu of possibilities and they can choose.

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Voces Bolivianas

Elia Varela Serra and Eduardo Ávila speaking at the Digital Citizen Indaba

Eduardo Ávila, executive director of Voces Bolivianas, was invited to share his experiences at this year's Highway Africa conference in South Africa, the largest conference for journalists from across the African continent. Speaking with Elia Varela Serra from Maneno.org, Ávila presented Voces Bolivianas as a case study of how citizen media projects can welcome under-represented languages to online conversation by adapting open source tools and collaborating with volunteer translation networks. A re-cap of the session on the Digital Citizen Indaba blog:

Just as in most African countries Internet access in Bolivia is still concentrated in major urban centres, where people have Internet at home or at work. “This not only leaves out the rural resident and lower social economic sectors but also indigenous groups and women”, says Eduardo Avila, Executive Director of Bolivian Voices. But in addition, Eduardo argues that there has been an online resurgence of indigenous languages in Bolivia.

Ávila also participated in the roundtable discussion “Are people ready to have their own means od disseminating information within their communities?”

Abidjan Blog Camps

Nadine Tchaptchet-Kouamouo from Abidjan Blog Camps, a collective of bloggers from Ivory Coast who are holding regular workshops and events to bring new bloggers into their midst, was also at this year's Highway Africa conference where she was awarded the “Best Woman ICT Reporter” prize. Looking back on her time in Johannesburg (where she stayed longer than she had expected), Nadine writes:

I do not regret having tried the “way of life” of this great country of South Africa, whose level of development can be frustrating for us, but can also inspire us in our own development. Starting with representatives at the community level (women, children, youth, etc …) it is necessary for us to see farther, think bigger, and envision the best …

Blogging Since Infancy, Uruguay

Pablo Flores from Plan Ceibal, Uruguay's One Laptop Per Chile project, and Blogging Since Infancy presented at this year's Ars Electronica Symposium on Cloud Intelligence. Pablo asked the audience to consider how those who have the most to gain can benefit from the information amassing online. The value of intelligence, after all, is in solving problems facing society. Flores points to housing, nutrition, and education as three major social issues which can be improved with more access to better information. In order to bring intelligence and information from the cloud to everyday citizens in Uruguay, for example, they need a network of connectivity and devices.

Flores points to a class which set up a blog to interact with fellow students across the border in Brazil. Of course such pen pal projects have existed for decades, but the blogs allow the students to interact in real time and incorporate other tools to learn Portuguese and Spanish. His presentation concludes by emphasizing the importance of avoiding black boxes - technological gadgets which function properly, but don't allow us to understand how they function. Plan Ceibal values open source technologies as a way of promoting curiosity so that students are encouraged to look “inside” the programs and adapt them to their cultural needs.

Ethan Zuckerman live-blogged Pablo's presentation. Pablo's conference statement was published in the Ars Electronica 2009 Catalog.

HiperBarrio

HiperBarrio was represented at Ars Electronica by Álvaro Ramirez, Gabriel Jaime Vanegas, and Diego Gomez. Álvaro's presentation introduced the history and evolution of HiperBarrio and how the group of young bloggers and citizen journalists in San Javier La Loma have managed to maintain a sense of community while still introducing new members to remain open and inclusive. He stressed that HiperBarrio re-thinks the roles of libraries as more than just places to consume culture produced at the institutional level; but rather that they should serve as collective laboratories to produce and publish culture from the grassroots. HiperBarrio served as a model for Chile's national library network as it re-thought the role of its libraries for the digital era, and was also presented in the application by Fundación Empresas Públicas de Medellín which eventually led to a $1 million grant from the Gates Foundation. (Ramirez points out that none of the $1 million is currently budgeted for HiperBarrio or similar grassroots new media training programs.)

Álvaro referenced the story of Suso as an example of how citizen journalism is forming a process by which the young people discover more information about their own community and become invested in its future. He also pointed out media production is providing an appealing alternative to gangs and drugs for the community's young people. An article in Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper adds:

The project was presented to the public at Ars Electronica with a video which highlights the important role HiperBarrio plays to help young people find alternatives to crime, violence and drugs in a region that has been marked by the drug trafficking, guerrillas and paramilitaries.

“When people have no access to media, and are given the opportunity to tell their stories and show who there are, then they take that opportunity,” Ramirez said to the public.

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HiperBarrio was represented at Ars Electronica by Álvaro Ramirez, Gabriel Jaime Vanegas, and Diego Gomez. Álvaro's presentation introduced the history and evolution of HiperBarrio and how the group of young bloggers and citizen journalists in San Javier La Loma have managed to maintain a sense of community while still introducing new members to remain open and inclusive. He stressed that HiperBarrio re-thinks the roles of libraries as more than just places to consume culture produced at the institutional level; but rather that they should serve as collective laboratories to produce and publish culture from the grassroots. HiperBarrio served as a model for Chile's national library network as it re-thought the role of its libraries for the digital era, and was also presented in the application by Fundación Empresas Públicas de Medellín which eventually led to a $1 million grant from the Gates Foundation. (Ramirez points out that none of the $1 million is currently budgeted for HiperBarrio or similar grassroots new media training programs.)

Álvaro referenced the story of Suso as an example of how citizen journalism is forming a process by which the young people discover more information about their own community and become invested in its future. He also pointed out media production is providing an appealing alternative to gangs and drugs for the community's young people. An article in Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper adds:

The project was presented to the public at Ars Electronica with a video which highlights the important role HiperBarrio plays to help young people find alternatives to crime, violence and drugs in a region that has been marked by the drug trafficking, guerrillas and paramilitaries.

“When people have no access to media, and are given the opportunity to tell their stories and show who there are, then they take that opportunity,” Ramirez said to the public.

Gabriel Jaime Vanegas Montoya and Alvaro Ramirez lifts the Ars Electronica Golden Nica Prize

This is a proud moment for the Rising Voices grantee HiperBarrio from Colombia. In June we reported that HiperBarrio had won the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica awards in the Digital Communities category and with it a 10,000 euro prize. Last Week HiperBarrio members Gabriel Jaime Vanegas Montoya and professor Alvaro Ramirez Ospina were in Linz, Austria to receive the prize.

Professor Álvaro Ramírez Ospina shares his reactions:

The afternoon and evening had a faint light gray while the rain still soaked the streets. The fog stretched a mystique over the landscape of a city beautifully split in two by the banks and bridges of the Danube river.

In a spacious Conference/Music Hall located in the center of the famous Brukernhaus building of the municipality of Linz the annual ritual of presenting Prix Ars Electronica 2009 awards began to take place with a rare and exceptional speech. [..]

To our surprise, the first category to receive the award proved to be Digital Communities we were invited to go on stage to answer a short interview about HiperBarrio, our philosophy, goals, achievements and plans for the future.

Amazing moments. Words came out of our mouths and just a big applause made us realize that it was time to stop talking. Not much later the Golden Nica statuette was delivered to Gabriel Jaime under a strong ovation. Shocked and stunned by emotion we did not manage to thank anybody.

Seconds before and still on stage y began to get, one by one, images of Luisa, Santiago, Yuliana, Carmen, Nora Catalina Deneiber, Marcela CatiRestrepo Diego, Viviana, J., Henry, Hugo, Beatriz Alvarez, Caligula, Alfredo Marulanda and Guillermo Alvarez (who just completed VideoBarrio for a new job) and many others who have supported us in this adventure that has been HiperBarrio-ConVerGentes during these two years.

I was also overwhelmed by the happy faces of the girls and boys of HiperBarrio-Ituango and reflected about this amazing journey and the challenges ahead: to expand the network to other locations and libraries and to become a formal institution with all the advantages and implied challenges.

Professor Ramirez at a Reunion in Ituango

An article in Equinoxio describes [es] it as a proud achievement for Colombians:

In an emotional moment, a video was presented to the audience at Ars Electronica that shows the achievements of the Hiperbarrio around La Loma, presenting an alternative living environment to young people in a sector that has characterized by violence from armed groups, unemployment and lack of opportunities.

After receiving the award Professor Ramirez said that it is not only a recognition of the work, but also a commitment to reach other communities which are isolated by poverty and violence.

Gabriel Jaime Vanegas, director of the Library La Loma, who joined the project of Professor Ramirez, highlights how libraries participating in Hiperbarrio have transcended its original role to become centers of meeting, exchange of experiences, solidarity and mutual support. The challenge ahead is training its members to share the experience in other sectors. (machine translation)

Terra Noticias reported [es]:

‘When people who have no access to media, are given the opportunity to tell their stories and show that there are, then take the opportunity, “said Ramirez to the public.

Speaking to EFE, Ramirez, a professor at the University of Bengen (Norway) and one of the initiators of the project, said the initial idea was that “people who do not have Internet access can blog ‘

Future Places 2009 congratulates HiperBarrio for its success and says:

We believe HiperBarrio is a great example of how digital media can make a difference in a particular socio-cultural context.

HiperBarrio was also featured in the Elespectador.com [es].

Accompanying the visitors of Freshno Digital. Photo: Catalina Restrepo

Last month HiperBarrio received a goodwill visit from the digital community of Fresno, a town and municipality in the Tolima department of Colombia. The two group met for the first time during the Campus party. Catalina Restrepo writes [es]:

Our visitors were 4 people in the town of Fresno (Tolima) that belong to digital Fresno project that aims to show the world what is that community. The purpose of the visit (the idea came to Campus - Party in the middle of a conversation with Carolina Botero and Diego Malavera) was that visitors were aware of the dynamics Hiperbarrio work and learning among all generated for transmission in their surrounding communities

Arriving on Sunday, we decided to plan some tours and accompanied them. They enjoyed touring the botanical gardens, the Park of Wishes and Municipal Planetarium.

I was pleased to hear them say that they were astonished at what we have achieved with Hiperbarrio. (machine translation)

The Campus party 2009 took place in Bogota, Colombia during July 6-12, 2009. Catalina Restrepo attended the event after a hectic travel to Bogota and tells us about her experience.

Don Alvaro Ramirez, Henry Barros and Catalina Restrepo jointly conducted a workshop on the theme “video on the internet' and how to create videos for this new medium. Catalina tells that the lecture was well received by the audience. She tweeted the event live.

Henry writes:

We are very happy to participate but the most important thing is to continue disseminating the project and making contacts.

At the Campus Party several Hiperbarrio/Convergentes members had the opportunity to interact with many groups outside Medellin. Fresno is a town and municipality in the Tolima department of Colombia. Malavera Diego Fernando at Fresno, dia a dia (Fresno, every day) blog reports that a bloggers group of Fresno has met the Convergentes team in the campus party and decided for a cultural exchange:

In this exchange a group of Fresno travel to Medellin to meet with bloggers of Convergentes and then they will come to Fresno to see the progress.

Fresno Bloggers at Campus Party. Image Courtesy Fresno blog http://www.karisma.org.co/blog_fresno2007/

Xady writes that the Convergentes members are waiting for the group from Fresno.

The exchange is planned during 14 to 17 and hope that visitors will be most pleased to be accompanied at the activities we have planned for them especially.

Meanwhile the Hiperbarrio workshops in Ituango went on. Ituango is a municipality located in the northern department of Antioquia, with a population of 43,919 inhabitants. The small town recently became a shelter for refugees fleeing fighting in the Colombian countryside. Here is a video describing the workshops:

Yuliana Paniagua writes:

I was traveling with Catalina Restrepo this place to meet and share knowledge with the youth group of Ituango Hiperbarrio who have been working with the group facilitator and tutor virtual Nora Catalina Urquijo.

The aim was to give a workshop on audio and video editing using the Media to Movie Maker, to provide new tools for production and publication. I believe that the goals were met and we hope we have lived up to expectations. (machine translation)

Yuliana also posts some pictures and video of the hidden beauty of Ituango where Hiperbarrio workshops are being held. Check them out:

Here is the first video of Ituango.

Blueandtanit shares some of the tutorials (in Spanish) she prepared as a mentor for the Hiperbarrio-Ituango outreach workshops.

Tutorial de panoramio by blueandtanit (pdf)
Tutorial de panorámicas by blueandtanit (pdf)
Tutorial de manejo básico de tablero de wordpress por blueandtanit y tomáz (pdf)
Tutorial configuración del blog -wordpress- by blueandtanit (pdf)

Hiperbarrio workshop in Ituango facilitated by Alvaro. Image Courtesy Doki114

Lina Marcela, a participant from the Ituango workshop writes how lack of opportunities have made girls take prostitution as an easy way out.

Elena Paniagua (Camela) at her blog Baúl de letras (Trunk of letters) writes about the heirs of wars:

Forgiveness is a word erased from the language of those who have lost parents to violence, children, siblings and friends. That's why the war becomes a vicious cycle that begins again in the very moment that many believe is over. The lack of compromise, tolerance, makes the grief of victims every year to feed feelings of revenge. (machine translation)

She thinks that education is the best way for the development of future generations.

Colonel Murión writes about spread of violence inside La Loma, which the government downplays as if these “were isolated cases. Violence is common, it has nothing to do with what happened, we're better. “

Henry writes about the punk culture which was imported in Medellin during the 1980s.

The PeriodismoCiudadano.com have lately been publishing a series of videos containing interviews with some members of the Convergentes. Here is the fifth and final video where they talked with Gabriel Jaime Vanegas, Catalina Restrepo and Yuliana Paniagua talk about citizen journalism in Colombia and the need to spread, especially among the young, and the possibilities that Internet and new technologies offer.

Other videos of the series:

Hiperbarrio will be starting new blog outreach workshop in Carmen de Viboral, a town about 45 minutes from Medellin. we will be bringing news about that workshop and more in our next feature on Hiperbarrio.

At the encouragement of HiperBarrio's co-founders Gabriel Vanegas and Álvaro Ramírez, Catalina registered in this year's “Talented Women” competition organized by the municipality of Medellín. As Catalina explained on her blog, she registered for the competition in order to spread more awareness about HiperBarrio:

El viernes 3 de Julio decidí presentarme al concurso “Mujeres talento” de la Alcaldía de Medellín, por sugerencia de Ángela Álvarez y Gabriel. Me presenté sin mayores pretensiones, con el interés de que el proyecto (mi proyecto, nuestro proyecto), quedara con su nombre de “Hiperbarrio” en la historia de aquella iniciativa de la Administración pública. Llené y organizé la papelería pertinente en medio de una “carreras” que duraron de seis de la mañana a dos de la tarde, me dirigí a trabajar a la biblioteca de la Universidad, y luego viajé a Bogotá dando el asunto como terminado.

Describing Catalina as a “brilliant blogger who writes about her life on Things from the Soul,” HiperBarrio's founder, professor Álvaro Ramírez noted on his blog that Catalina was selected as one of seven nominees.

Then on July 22 Catalina's many supporters learned on Twitter that she won the “Mujeres Talento” award:

Congratulations immediately poured in from Guatemala, Peru, Venezuela, New York, Barranquilla, Brussels, and Bogotá.

Catalina receiving the “Mujeres Talento” award with Medellín mayor Alonso Salazar.

Congratulations, in the form of affectionate blog posts, were also quick to come from Catalina's friends and colleagues in the HiperBarrio project. Carmen, in a post titled “And the winner is …”, writes:

“La Mujer Talento en la categoría de Desarrollo Social es… Catalina Restrepo”. Esta frase nunca se nos olvidará, porque esa Catalina es nuestra Cata, la mujer íntegra, entregada y sensibilizada con una comunidad que quizás no alcanza ahora a dimensionar la grandeza de esta mujer. Nuestra tarea como grupo no es solo la de recuperar la memoria histórica de nuestra vereda, también es hacer historia y el martes 21 de julio de 2009, Catalina comenzó a formar parte de esa historia futura, esa historia que sin duda, trascenderá de generación en generación.

“Coronel Murión” also penned his congratulations to Catalina on their group blog, and posted several photos from the event.

Catalina Urguijo and Catalina Restrepo

In Spanish the word tocaya refers to someone who shares your same name. Catalina Urquijo Tejada, another dedicated leader of the project describes the moment when Catalina was awarded the prize in a post titled “Congratulations to a tocaya“:

Cuando dieron la mención de honor y cati no estaba allí, sentí que era porque se había quedado “con el premio mayor”, y así fue, luego de unos minutos de intriga el nombre de CATALINA RESTREPO fue dicho, el grito de júbilo de todos los que la acompañamos fue tan emocionante que algunos quedaron con secuelas en su voz, el rostro de esta gran amiga y confidente se veía bastante emocionado, tanta fue la emoción que el alcalde se contagió y la alzó en sus brazos …

Congratulations Catalina!

‘HiperBarrio' is a community of young bloggers that developed out of what were initially two independent initiatives in Medellín, Colombia: Álvaro Ramírez’s video blogging workshops and the media workshops of Juliana Rincón and Jorge Montoya. They then joined forces to form four groups whose activities included blogging, workshops and events. The ConVerGentes group has succeeded in establishing itself locally as well as getting integrated into international networks. Thanks to a very active lineup of offerings, “HiperBarrio” is in the process of expanding its activities both on site and far beyond. In going about this, the proprietors formed a partnership with the Universidad Católica del Norte. “HiperBario” has been singled out for recognition with the Golden Nica in the DIGITAL COMMUNITIES category.

Miralmundo writes [es]:

This is undoubtedly the main award given to Colombia in the field of media technology so far and the best recognition to a group of young people who have worked hard to create a virtual community that wants to show the world.

Cadaunadas reminds [es] that it is one of the most important awards in digital culture. In 2004 Wikipedia was awarded a Golden Nica in the category “Digital Communities”.

Blueandtanit describes [es] the reactions of the Hiperbarrio team after the news was broken:

The faces of surprise and joy were not long in coming, especially when we knew that was the highest prize in the category and an important symbolic and economic, is the first time Colombia won the prize in the category and a source of pride for all.

I share some of the photos taken yesterday, when we heard the news, since a picture is worth a thousand words, and mine have gone from the excitement.

Xady writes [es]:

Work, effort, love and continuity in social work and community, based on free tools on the Internet to show the world local stories.

Means always wanting the best, not just constantly working on our project of life but also in social life of the project. [..] This shows that “nothing is impossible”.

Catalina Restrepo at Cosas Del Alma writes [es]:

What is the prize?

The prize for me it means a recognition of the dreams that we have woven together. It is a way of showing us that this convergentes has allowed us to work from the difference, has made us grow as individuals and collectively.

The award also means a “continue to work with projects for a while.”

In June 2007 the Hiperbarrio collective started its workshops and our previous features depict its commendable works. Catalina Restrepo retrospects [es]:

The dream became a verb for excellence in every match in every workshop, every “chat”. La Loma's library was the space and the network to find a pretext, to discover that the letters, cameras and a computer, could form a perfect amalgamation.

Professor Álvaro Ramírez Ospina writes [es] that the award money will be used to carry out more outreach efforts to newer marginalized communities:

For me the award means first and foremost a great encouragement, but also greater responsibility. I see that drives us to take on major challenges such as those planned but we were unable to perform. I mean the idea of extending it to other communities with evidence that the Internet can be used in a healthy and productive manner and as a virtual territory where it is possible and urgent to create things new. Scope for the development of speech and artistic potential saved, all we have, and they rarely give us the opportunity to explore and enhance.

With 10 thousand euros of the prize can do several things: to support the expansion into the neighborhood and other places. Buy digital cameras, audio recorders and video make us that much needed, and have an amount to have with what to buy, occasionally, a snack for each group. Now that happens when the Convergence workshops are lengthening, and nobody wants to leave the library until you finish editing or polishing products diam not have a penny to be able to provide some food.

So far everything has been volunteering and idealism. We hope to professionalize certain tasks and the reward points to that.

Hiperbarrio's feat was recently featured [es] in Agencia Magazine & Der Standard [de].

Rising Voices also congratulates its grantee Voces Bolivianas (Bolivian Voices) for winning an honorary Mention in the 2009 Prix Ars Electronica awards.

(All translations were done using machine translation)

Of course, it is not without its critics, but in the sixty brief years since its drafting, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has become the most translated document in the world, has formed the basis of international law, and has given rise to a multi-billion dollar industry of organizations, institutions, and academic departments that observe and analyze the status of human rights around the world, and advocate on behalf of those whose fundamental human rights have been violated. One of these institutions is the University of California at Berkeley's Human Rights Center, which earlier this month convened a conference to bring together leading technologists and human rights advocates in order to “share best practices and develop new strategies for incorporating technology to address human rights abuses.” In addition to the main event in Berkeley, California, there was also a parallel event with live presenters in New York City, and remote viewing hubs where participants contributed via chat and Twitter from Colombia and Egypt.

Rising Voices was well represented at the conference. I spoke in Berkeley about how human rights organizations can use citizen media tools to empower communities affected by human rights abuses to tell their own stories, rather than advocating on behalf of those communities as has traditionally been the model of most advocacy organizations. In New York City Lova Rakotomalala of the Foko Madagascar project explained how Malagasy bloggers used new media tools to report on the human rights violations which took place during the recent presidential coup, as well as to give context to the heated conflict for outside observers who might not know much about Madagascar other than what they have seen in Disney movies. In the small community library of San Javier La Loma, Colombia the participants of HiperBarrio - a citizen media project that just won a Prix Award for best digital community - gathered to view the live stream of the Berkeley conference and continue the discussion about human rights with local students.

Sharing his thoughts about the New York City Human Rights barcamp with the rest of the Foko community, Lova Rakotomalala writes:

As you know, Foko's primary mission is to document the everyday lives of Malagasy citizens and local agents of environmental change, not record potential human rights violations by their government. Yet, the ongoing crisis decided otherwise for the time being. The hub was a great opportunity to meet and learn first hand from Human Rights activists present at the event.

The presentation went over the background of the crisis, the known human rights violations that were documented since January 09, the use of new media by tools by the dynamic new media users' community in Madagascar (both related and non-related to Foko) and the obstacles for more extensive reporting of current events. We also posit that among all the past and current human rights violations in Madagascar (military repression, limited freedom of speech, arrest etc..) the most glaring offense in our opinion is the 400,000 people (mostly children) currently at risk of hunger in the South because the political deadlock prevents an effective response.

The slides from Lova's presentation are available on Slideshare:

On the outskirts of Medellín the citizen media project HiperBarrio invited students from the neighboring school to sit and watch the live transmission.

San Javier La Loma librarian and HiperBarrio project coordinator Gabriel Vanegas describing the purpose of the conference to students from the community's school.

Catalina Restrepo later described the events of the day on the project's group blog:

At one in the afternoon, the students from the “Educational Institution Loma Hermosa” arrived at the library. The objective was to watch the conference “The Soul of the New Machine”, but the language barrier made it difficult to keep their attention.

Because of this, Gabriel Jaime decided to speak to them a little about human rights, the French Revolution, and about our project.

The different groups of students arrived at intervals. Some were more attentive than others, but they were all witnesses to an event that discussed topics very close to the hard realities that our community lived and continues to live. Here we still haven't seen any process of justice, truth and reconciliation. The victims cry to their relatives in silence and some of the perpetrators pass through the streets of the neighborhood as if nothing happened.

During the last visit of students Professor Álvaro directly interpreted what the speakers of the conference were discussing, such as the importance of databases in gathering information about crimes and massacres in countries like Peru, Guatemala, and Chat, and the enormous challenges facing experts who must organize, protect, and encrypt the data in case the hard drives are stolen.

Despite all the language-related difficulties, the technical language of the experts, and the lack of seating in our small but precious library, the simple fact that a community like our own can take part in a conference of experts discussing the topic of human rights from thousands of kilometers away is a milestone without precedent.

HiperBarrio is, in fact, a perfect example of the new era of human rights advocacy. Before Professor Álvaro Ramírez and Gabriel Vanegas decided to teach young library users from the community how to blog and upload short video documentaries to YouTube, the only online references to San Javier La Loma all came from foreign activist-journalists and human rights organizations eager to portray the violence that took place in the region throughout the 90's, and up to 2003. In his own words, Gabriel Vanegas wanted to rescue the community's history, culture, and idiosyncrasies so that its online representation was more accurate of its offline reality. That is not to say that the project's bloggers haven't covered the violence that affected, and continues to affect, all of their lives; Deneiber Xady has written compellingly about growing up in a near warzone. However, the bloggers of HiperBarrio are also happy to point out all the positive aspects of San Javier La Loma that are often overlooked by outsiders and residents alike.

Some human rights organizations have already realized that they can better serve a community by training its residents how to tell their own stories online, rather than speaking on their behalf. The Jesuit Refugee Service in collaboration with Ancla 2, for example, has trained a group of youth who have been affected by violence along the Venezuela-Colombia border how to publish photos and stories to a group blog. Similarly, Panos London worked with the African HIV Policy Network last autumn to teach HIV-positive immigrants living in London how to produce their own videos. Open Society Institute's support of Rising Voices health-related grantees have enabled bloggers like Pavel Kutsev to describe first-hand what life is like in a community that most of us choose to ignore, such as injection drug users.

Still, the majority of multi-million dollar human rights organizations spend their time and money gathering statistics and publishing reports without ever giving the communities they work with a chance to speak for themselves. There is a long road ahead, but we seem to be on the right path.

What does a typical citizen media workshop in La Loma organized by Convergentes mean? Álvaro Ramirez Ospina writes:

You receive 10 or 12 smiling faces, a group eager to share knowledge, some tables and chairs, 10 computers connected to broadband.

This Sunday the theme was sound. They came to learn, play and manage Audacity, an excellent program that also allow you to record sound live, lets you edit what you've recorded.

The Convergentes team after the Audacity Workshop

Miss Ligeia posts some photos of the workshop and writes:

For nearly two weeks, between this bunch of excuses that life offers us to be together, we try to take a group photo, and even if it missed the presence of several of us, we shared a joyful evening.

The outreach program as declared earlier has already started. Álvaro Ramirez Ospina ventured in Ituango, a beautiful village of Northern Antioquia to “create another community of authors of HiperBarrio”:

The Catholic University of the North has proposed to us to potentiate the interest of a group in the Diocesano Juan Pablo II school, most of them girls, who wish to use the new tecnologies of self-publishing through blogs to write about their lives. The idea is that they can do it through photographs, texts and videos, both individually and on the group blog “The secret beauty of Ituango” which will soon see the light.

Besides attending the initial workshop on photography, they followed me the first steps in the creation and use of blogs within the open software platform WordPress.

Álvaro Ramirez Ospina walks up the slope of Ituango, photo by Jairo Arley M. Palacio.

Here is a blog about Ituango [sp].

Catalina Restrepo Martinez wrote that on the 25th of April:

several of the Convergentes members were participating in FLISOL (Festival Lationaemericano Install free software), held in the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín.

It's really wonderful achievement to unite people around events like this gathering…if you can build a community despite the differences, if identity can be constructed from the territory and if you can believe in collective construction of knowledge and on the convergence of both.

She also noted how this project has made La Loma significant for them although the infrastructural challenges are present:

Yes, we can talk about the talks, the full moon, those who were, who still, but more important is the transformation of the neighborhood that has been generated in our minds. The perception of a territory that has become more humane and less indifferent.

In another post Catalina writes [sp] about her dreams, challenges and realizations.

Sondelaloma reports that some local schools barred students with piercings on their body to enter classes and comments “it makes me think that we still live in a closed society and this is unfair.”

Three new members have joined Convergentes. One of them, Henry Barros, who was coordinating the video workshops has opened a videoblog called The Mutant Blog. He writes:

These few weeks it was fascinating to learn the process to use the tools of new media in a useful way … has been an enriching experience.

I have named this space the mutant blog. It will be nourished with a gallery of videos dedicated to the urban cultures of San Cristobal La Loma, Medellín. And it will contain mostly stories of groups, groups and supporters of various forms of musical expression.

Hiperbarrio was recently nominated for the Ars Electronica 2009 awards.