Portnoy Zheng informed about the workshop earlier:

A speaker who is an expert of this field will give workshop participants a 40 minutes talk and then we will visit a green construction site maintained by Mongolian Green Coalition, an environmental NGO that is trying to change the poor living condition of more than 60% of city population who live in yurt district.

On the 8th of September another workshop took place in Choibalsan, a far Eastern city of Mongolia. The topic was agriculture since the eastern aimags (province) of Mongolia are agriculture-based (photos can be found here).

The above two workshops were conducted by Nomad Green editors Otgoo and Odnoo.

Portnoy Zheng held another workshop in Taipei with 15 Mongolian students who are studying in Taiwan. Photos of the workshop can be found here.

In our last report we commented that there are many posts by Nomad Green bloggers in Mongolian, but non Mongolian speakers cannot read them. Thanks to the passionate translators of Nomad Green like Azaa, Ariungerel, Tungaa, and Odnoo many articles have already been translated from Mongolian into English. We are highlighting some of them here.

Greenroza (Narantsetseg Nanzad) informs that according to the Mongolian law, a payment for exploration of precious metal and other mineral resources needs to be made by the mining companies. These funds should go into local budget for the local area development and to solve the social issues of the locals. But nobody actually pays and the law is never enforced. The blogger opines:

NGOs should run activities to teach more about the legal rights of citizens, to monitor state actions, and to increase participation of citizen in social life.

Oyunmandah Byambasuren informs of some revolutionary decisions by the Mongolian government. The following are the major decisions among others:

* Banning the use or import of plastic bags for packaging or wrapping from 2010.
* Cutting down trees to construct piers or other structures is prohibited.
* Hunting licenses limit killing of animals.

Tamir Batbayar (Tamiraa) shares his findings and excitement about the cutting-edge wind energy power plant, which he believes could solve the air pollution problem in Ulaanbatar. The blogger also comments:

Chinggis Khan used to care and protect the nature no one else could ever do. If we really admire our great khan, we should follow and respect the “Ikh Zasag” law of Chinggis Khan. In this law, it tells how Mongolians should treat the nature and the environment.

Gerel visited Taiwan in August and describes his reactions and experiences in the post “Highly developed countries also have their own problems“:

Taiwan is located on a very small island so there aren’t any fresh water except rain water and climate is very hot. People in Taiwan pay 30,000 tugrug for cold air or conditioner. It means they buy cold air. Can you imagine? How can we live without air and water?

As for today the water we drink and air we breathe is free. So protect them, Mongolians!!!

Otgonsuren Jargal also shares shares how Taiwan is seen through Mongolian eyes.

Liang Guo writes about the water and air pollution in Mongolia.

Dorjgotovariungerel shares the lives of herders in Arkhangai aimag where blooming plants and for dairy products such as airag are abundant in the summer. The blogger also notices:

I observed other strange one that local administrators like to meet with mining people who has a license of exploration and exploitation on mining. [..] And I believe that soum governor doesn’t worry about degradation of the environment including land degradation, overgrazing and soil erosion.

Nomad Green is also organizing Taiwanese people/NGOs to visit Mongolia to better the understanding between both the nations. The professors and students from Fu Jen Catholic University visited Mongolia in July to share their love and passion. Portnoy writes about them:

This is not their first time to Mongolia, in fact. However, due to the financial crisis, they also faced the difficulty of less donation. However, they successfully managed to go to Mongolia and cooperate with local Catholic organizations for several interesting workshops and camps for children, teenagers, and house makers.

The first workshops of the Rising Voices grantee Nomad Green took place in last May in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar. More than 60 participants attended those workshops to learn the use of citizen media tools with which they will be discussing the environmental and public health issues in Mongolia. But only about 20 participants actually commenced posting in the project blog. Portnoy Zheng, cited the main reason as lack of Internet connections to implement the learning practically. He describes that these efforts were taken to overcome the problem:

The editor’s team (including me) is encouraging participants to write their first post around themselves and their thoughts on greener and healthier Mongolia, and is also encouraging participants to give us hand written pieces or document file, in order to lower the worries of publishing on Internet.

Last June, a team of NTV (Mongolian TV channel) reporters interviewed Portnoy Zheng about Nomad Green.

Participants of the July 28-31 workshops in Ulaanbatar, Image by Portnoy Zheng

On July 28-31 another series of workshops were held in Ulaanbaatar. Let us hear from Portnoy Zheng, who informed us about the workshop via an email:

Although it is half a month already since Nomad Green's latest two workshops in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, I still remember clearly the enthusiasm and passion I felt from new participants of Nomad Green (Mongolian Environmental Information Program, supported by Rising Voices and MTF Taiwan)

In early July, the core team of Nomad Green (Portnoy, Otgoo, Odnoo) finally decided to hold another two workshops on July 29 and 30.

And this time, instead of covering broad range of Mongolian environmental issues, such as air pollution, water pollution, deforestation, mining…, we wanted to focus on special topics that matters very much to people who live in this over-crowded therefore fragile city.

So each of the two workshops has its own special topic with a relative bus trip to visit the exact area. The topic of the first workshop on 7/29 is “Tuul River“, the mother river that provide water usage to about 60% of Mongolian population (which is 1.5 million people) who lives in downtown Ulaanbaatar and the yurt district around the downtown. The other topic for the second workshop on 7/30 is “Waste management”, which is a major concern for such a fastly growing city. [..]

Most parts were the same as the last four workshops in May, except that, first, we skipped facebook, youtube, flickr, but concentrated on wordpress (which is the platform Nomad Green is on) and twitter. The reason was that we only had limited time and twitter is the simplest one to teach. As a country of 2.8 million people, the participants of our workshops were all shocked to know that there are some people on twitter whose tweets are read by up to 2 million at the same time. (I used Shaq O'nell's twitter account as the example)

The two visits, one to the near-by basin of Tuul river, the other to the landfill site of UB, were really very helpful for all of us to grasp a fuller picture of each issue. We saw how the watercourse was changed by the mining company which caused serious decrease on water volume. We also witnessed how the constructions built in the basin was corroding the river. According to the estimation from UB city government, the utmost amount of people that Tuul river can support is less than 2 million, and there are already 1.5 million. Since Tuul river and the underground water (that also come from the river) are the only water resources to support the whole population in UB, the protection of Tuul river is extremely vital.

The visit to UB landfill site was also an important experience to all participants since none of them had ever visited the place before and didn't know where their trashes go. The landfill site was built with the support from Japanese government so the facilities are all new and really good, however, the logistics of waste transportation, the system of recycling, the regulation to reduce urban trash, and the citizens' awareness to the issue are not matured yet, so the waste management issue has been the most difficult problem to city government for many years and still is.

There are many posts from the participants and you can find them in the Nomad Green Blog. But sadly we get this error when we try to read most of the posts in Mongolian language via an online translation like Google translate:

Without any available tool it is up to the translators of the project who will have to painstakingly translate selected articles. We hope that soon some more posts will be available in English and Mandarin. Here we highlight some of the posts which were already translated in English.

Gombosuren Arslan, a famous environmental activist in Mongolia, wrote about the fearful Minamata disease which is happening in Ömnögovi Province in South Gobi, Mongolia right now. According to the doctors, 5 in 10 births are premature or the fetus dies at the period of 5 or 6 months and the children bear signs of abnormality. In this post Arslan relates to a disease of the World War II era, which happened because 27 tons of Gold mining waste poisoned with mercury and cyanide was dumped to the sea. According to the head of the provincial social health service:

Parents whose children are abnormal were mostly extracting gold manually and living near the water which was used for washing the mercury and cyanide.

Read more of his posts.

Odontuya Tsetsegdelger (Odnoo) did a bit of investigative journalism and found that a local Gold mining companies are dumping their waste water into Orkhon river:

While I was driving along Orkhon river on my way to the waterfall, it looked very muddy and dirty but I heard it had been raining recently so I believe it must be the rain water that changed the color of the water.

When I almost reached the waterfall I saw the river flowing in yellow brown color and became very narrow. I asked the family I am staying with, they said there are two gold mining companies at the head water of Orkhon river and these companies opened their dam filled with waste water from gold mining two days ago right after rain. Locals said that they usually dump waste water contaminated with mercury and cynnade that used for extract gold.

More worryingly 31 percent of Mongolian territory have been issued Mining Licenses, reports Otgonsuren Jargal. She also informs that Mongolia is facing desertification as rivers and wetlands are drying up.

Batzul Chimeddorj (Bazu), a recent university graduate asks which are more destructive – human beings or pest insects?

Oyunmandah Byambasuren (Mandah) points to the fact that the significance of the building water pools in Ulaanbaatar is that it makes the air humid. The blogger also quotes a Member of Parliament to inform that Uranium is the most unharmed and the cheapest source of energy.

The next goal of the project is to translate Mongolian language articles into English and Chinese and to arrange workshops in other cities of Mongolia.

For more photos of the workshop please visit this Flickr album. You can also follow Nomad Green on Twitter.

Mongolia from above

Portnoy informed via an email to the Rising Voices Community on May 14, 2009:

The first four workshops just finished yesterday, we have trained about 60 participants and right now there are more than 70 articles in Mongolian at the dashboard of Nomad Green waiting to be published (after being edited by Otgoo, Odnoo, and Bolor, our Mongolian editors.)

It takes time, and it will take more time to translate them into English. But we are all excited about this project and I think we have all four successful workshops.

The venue of the workshop was the Press Institute of Mongolia which has a computer lab with about 15 functioning computers and fast enough Internet connection.

Amongst the participants were environmental activists, independent journalist. But most of them were concerned citizens and students.

Portnoy introduces us to some of the members of the Project:

“Nomad Green is an idea brought out by General Secretary Lin Cheng-hsiou (Axiou) of Mongolian and Tibetan Foundation (MTF) in Taiwan.”

Axiou

The Chief Editor, Ms. Otgonsuren Jargal (Otgoo), is an active member of Green Coalition of Ulaanbaatar. She has working experience as journalist and editor in both mainstream and independent media of Mongolia. Besides speaking Mongolian, her mother tongue, she can speak good English, French, and Russian.

Ms. Otgoo

Davaa (Guo Liang)

Axiou presented “Why Nomad Green” to the participants which ended with the slide: “empower ourselves in the web age”.

Portnoy used this slide to introduce Nomad Green and the environmental issues in Mongolia:

Boum and Otgoo interpreted the above presentations in Mongolian for the participants.

Then Boum apprised (in Mongolian) the participants about the environmental issues in Mongolia and shared his experience as a major environmental activist in Mongolia for more than a decade.

Boum

Here are some of the Nomad Green participants in Ulaanbaatar sending greetings to the world:

Soon you will be able to read their posts too in English or Mandarin. Here is the video from the third workshop:

After the workshops Portnoy retrospects:

Successful, however, still far from perfect. We don't have much time to teach all the tools I think are necessary to all participants, so some of them know how to twitter and most of them don't. Most of them know how to post an article in wordpress based Nomad Green website now but still some of them don't.

The project website has many posts up but they are still in Mongolian only. There are no online translation tool to translate from Mongolian. So many of the world readers have to wait till the translations are up. The translators will soon be completing their final exams and have time to translate them into English and Mandarin.

Portnoy informed about the future plans of Nomad Green:

We also plan to extend our training to other rural provinces in August, but I haven't got any idea of how to gather enough computers. Darkhan (the 2nd biggest city) and Erdenet (the 3rd biggest city) will be our first targets. I checked some Internet cafes in the two cities last week when I visited there and they are really not suitable for training.

But we are confident that the Nomad Green team will overcome all the challenges and make it possible. None can stop them empowering themselves to be an active part of the citizen media revolution and address the perils of climate changes in Mongolia.

Images courtesy Portnoy Zheng & Nomad Green

We all have our presumptions and stereotypes about Mongolia, a country which is rarely caught by the international media radar. There is little information about the Mongols except for the legendary Genghis Khan. What if there was a vibrant blogosphere bringing Mongolian perspectives to the world readers? One might argue that we often see stereotyped images of nomads, tents and animals in the desert representing Mongolia. Are those people really going to blog?

Irish Grand Pub…in Mongolia by Alan Cordova, used under a Creative Commons License. See More of Ulaanbaatar in Flickr.

The fact is that the country has undergone dramatic transformation both in political and economical terms since the early 1990s. Mongolia has joined the one laptop per child project and within 2010 every Mongolian child will be equipped with a laptop.

Mongolian children working with XO laptops. Image by One Laptop Per CHild, used under a Creative Commons license.

20,000 units of the XO laptops were provided in January 2008 to children from 6 to 12 years of age in the most inaccessible parts of the country, and also in Ulaanbaatar. (source)

According to the 2007 stats more than 10% of its approx 3 million population use internet. So it will be a matter of time when more and more Mongolians will be starting to use the citizen media tools like blogs. One of the latest Rising Voices grantees are on the job with their outreach efforts.

Portnoy Zheng is from Taiwan and besides his remarkable works for Global Voices he works as a project manager in Mongolia and Tibetan Foundation in Taiwan. He is the man behind the Rising Voices grantee Nomad Green, which in collaboration with the Mongolian and Tibetan Foundation and the Mongolian Green Party, will train Mongolian citizens how to use citizen media. They idea is that they will write about their country using citizen media tools concentrating on the environmental crisis and create awareness. The target audience is first the Mongolians, second the Chinese, because they are their biggest neighbors and then of course the world readers.

Mongolian natural resources are not adequate and are further challenged by human exploitation and the effects of global warming. Hot summers, long and harsh winters, and low rainfall threatens desertification of new lands.

The deforestation rates have risen since the mid 1990s from around 40,000 ha annually to around 60,000 ha (World Bank).

Portnoy writes in the project blog:

Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, is a city rounded by mountains. Because of the unpredictable climate changes in recent years, cattle that nomadic people depends on died a lot which drives many to go to the city and live in poverty.

Gorkhi-Terelj National Park, Mongolia. Image by yeowatzup, used under a Creative Commons license.

The capital Ulaanbatar has its share of problems; air pollution and the lack of clean water supply. The air pollution is spread by the burning of soft coal, and airborne industrial pollution from the former Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. The country has only 34.8 cubic kilometers of renewable water resources, 53% of which are used for farming. According to 2000 statistics only 77% of city dwellers and 30% of the people living in rural areas had access to pure water. (source)

We have discussed with Portnoy on the details of the project. Here is the interview:

RV: What prompted you to engage in an outreach activity in Mongolia?

Portnoy:  Besides Global Voices, I am engaged in several NGOs and social movements in Taiwan and make a lot of friends. After I left my full-time job at the end of last year from a Web 2.0 startup, my friend, the Chief Secretary of Mongolian and Tibetan Foundation, Lin Cheng-hsiou (Axiou) invited me to join this project around citizen media, digital inclusion, environmental awareness, and cultural interaction. I had no doubt and decided to take part in since these are all my favorite issues..

RV: What are the relations between Taiwanese and Mongolians? Do they travel to each others' country?

Portnoy: It would be a long story. It is said that Taiwan the island was first “discovered” and “incorporated” into China's territory in Yuan Dynasty, which was ruled by Mongolians. Mongolia became an independent country in 1911 (the last year of Qing Dynasty), however, the Republic of China which established in 1912 denied the fact and still encompassed much of mainland China and Outer Mongolia. In 1945 at the end of World War II the Republic of China added the island groups of Taiwan and the Penghu islands to its authority. These island groups, together with Kinmen and Matsu, became the full extent of the Republic of China's authority after 1949 when the Kuomintang (KMT) lost the Chinese Civil War. The KMT lost the war to the Chinese Communist Party which then founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China (according to Wikipedia). Therefore, many (Inner and Outer) Mongolian families came to Taiwan with KMT in 1949.

Mongolia has long been recognized by the world including PRC China as an independent country, however, in ROC's (outdated) Constitution, Mongolia is still defined as a part of its territory. The part of Constitution is seen as a big joke now because it still remains there while ROC(Taiwan) is not recognized as a country by the world. People in Taiwan and Mongolia, however, are more realistic and has established tight connection on many aspects. There are more than 300 Mongolian students in Taiwan, and each year Mongolia would sent their police officers and procurators to Taiwan for training programs. Backpackers, volunteers, NGOs, and business people from Taiwan visit Mongolia very often.

I just attended the memorial ceremony of Genghis Khan on 4/16 with hundreds of Mongolian Taiwanese and Monglian citizens in Taipei.

You can see more pictures here .

RV: Do you have an idea of the Mongolian blogging scene?

Portnoy: My knowledge of Mongolian blogosphere is poor. I can't read Mongolian language though I plan to learn since this year. Most information of Mongolian blogosphere I know is from Global Voices. Fortunately, I've been given some very useful information about it by Ms. Otgoo, our Mongolian editor.

RV: Have you already recruited the Mongolian editors?

Portnoy: Yes, we have recruited a part-time Mongolian editor now, Ms. Otgonsuren(Otgoo). She was a teacher, a journalist, and now is a dedicated NGO member. She has published some posts on Nomad Green. She will talk about the journalism basics and environmental issues that Mongolian faces nowadays in the workshops.

RV: The contents will be in Mongolian and in Chinese. Who will translate them vice-versa?

Portnoy: We plan to invite Mongolian college students who major in Chinese in National University of Mongolia and Mongolian students who study in Taiwan to help us on translation. We have established connections with both communities, they are all excited about Nomad Green and willing to offer help.

Landscape of Mongolia, Image by Tiarescott, and used under a Creative Commons license.

RV: Have you found your venue in Ulaanbaatar? What are the infrastructural challenges like the internet access and its cost?

Portnoy: We have decided to use the office of Journlaist Institute of Mongolia(JIM). Our partner Mr. Boum, the leader of Mongolian Greens in Ulannbaatar help us find this place. It can contain 15-20 workshop participants and has connected PCs. According to Boum, the connection speed is not very fast but acceptable. The cost is 15USD per hour. We really appreciate JIM for providing this great place for our workshops.

RV: Tell us about the planned workshops and curricula.

Portnoy: The first four workshop will be between May 4 to May 14 since Axiou and I are visiting Mongolia as well. Each workshop would be eight hours, including an hour and half of introduction to citizen media and the changing mediascape, another an hour and half on Mongolian environmental issues, two hours of new media training, and three hours of writing and practicing. We might alter the curricula based on the actual situation and participants' response.

Please visit the Nomad Green Website and the project blog to learn more. Looking forward to reading lots of blogs from Mongolia discussing how to tackle the environmental problems.

Thumbnail image of Portnoy Zheng by zozo2k3, used under a Creative Commons license.

Of the 270 project proposals, the following five are most representative of the innovation, purpose and goodwill that Rising Voices aims to support.

Abidjan Blog Camps

Théophile Kouamouo has long been one of Francophone Africa's leading bloggers. Based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Kouamouo is one of the founders of the Ivoire Blog network and started the wildly successful meme “Why I Blog About Africa.” (Elia Varela Serra summarized many of the resulting responses in a two-part series on Global Voices.) Kouamouo is now trying to bring many more of his countrymen and women to the blogosphere by organizing a series of “blog camps” around Abidjan in which current Ivorian bloggers can discuss the issues affecting them and show new bloggers how to join their ranks. Kouamouo first proposed the idea on his blog back in August last year, which attracted a number of enthusiastic commenters supporting the idea. Blog Camps have a long history of attracting new citizens to the participatory net. A number of blog camps have taken place in India, including in Chennai in 2006 and, more recently, in Mumbai. Blogcamp CEE last October brought many new participants to the Russian-speaking blogosphere. For the most part, however, West Africa (and particularly Francophone West Africa) has been left out of the booming global blogosphere. That is starting to change. Panos West Africa, in partnership with Highway Africa and Global Voices, recently announced the winners of the Waxal - Blogging Africa Awards. Next year we can expect to find many more Ivorians on that list as Théophile Kouamouo sets out to organize a series of events that will bring dozens if not hundreds of Ivorians to the blogosphere. Abidjan Blog Camps will also promote more pan-African online interaction by teaming up with existing blog camp movements in Madagascar, Kenya, Uganda, Mauritius, and South Africa.

Ceasefire Liberia

Just west of Ivory Coast lies Liberia and its roughly 3.5 million inhabitants. Settled by free slaves from the United States in the early 19th century, Liberia fell into a 14-year dark period of civil war and lawlessness that concluded in late 2003 with the presence of ECOWAS and the United Nations. Today Liberia is slowly recovering despite inadequate infrastructure, unemployment at around 80%, and former combatants (many of them minors) who must be re-integrated into society. Many unemployed Liberians have put their hopes in friends and relatives living abroad in the United States. However, there is often a lack of communication and understanding between Liberians at home and those living in the diaspora. By partnering with African Refuge - a drop-in center for West African youth - and the Century Dance Complex in Park Hill, Staten Island (the largest Liberian community outside of Africa), and Amnesty International in Monrovia, freelance journalist Ruthie Ackerman aims to help foster a transatlantic Liberian blogging community.

Those Liberians who lived through the war — whether soldiers or not — experienced some type of trauma or displacement. By creating a community and sharing experiences with others, it has helped give these youth a purpose and vision that there is something larger than themselves. This will benefit the community (on both sides of the ocean) on many levels: Liberians, many of whom have difficulty adjusting to life in America, can reconnect with their families and dispel myths about what life is like in the U.S. There are also left-over tensions from the war, which may be able to be diffused through the dialogue created between the communities.

Real Experience of the Digital Era - China

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Shenyang, literally meaning “the city to the north of Shen River” and capital of the Liaoning province, is touting itself as China's “next tourist destination.” But whether you are visiting the ancient pagodas of Old City or the official “High-tech Industrial Development Zone” the tourist brochures won't mention the city's male and female sex workers who mostly come from poor rural communities in search of talked-up urban opportunities. In partnership with the Ai Zhi Yuan Zhu Center for Health and Education documentary filmmaker Wei Zhang will train male and female sex workers who use the AZYZ center how to maintain a blog and upload short video documentaries to share their experiences, opinions, and troubles in order to promote more understanding of the region's sex worker population.

Nomad Green - Mongolia

Environment officials from throughout Northeast Asia met in Ulaanbaatar this week for the first time to discuss climate change and how to enhance energy efficiency in the region. Mongolia's capital city was a fitting location for the meeting as the country's environmental deterioration has accelerated recently due to rapid urbanization, industrial growth, and increased coal consumption. Ulaanbaatar is frequently shrouded in a haze of thick pollution:

Desertification from climate change is threatening the livelihoods of nomadic Mongolian tribesmen and the country's saiga antelope was just named the most endangered antelope species in Asia. It is amid so much negative news that Portnoy Zheng, in collaboration with the Mongolian and Tibetan Foundation and the Mongolian Green Party, will train Mongolian citizens how to spread awareness - both at home and abroad - about their country's environmental crisis. Nomad Green aims to 1.) train citizen journalists how to use blogs, digital video, podcasts, and map mashups to report on environmental news, 2.) create a network and community of environmentalists sharing and spreading information about related threats, solutions, and opportunities, and 3.) translate content into Chinese and English to promote more regional and international cooperation in facing Mongolia's environmental challenges.

Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques - Yemen

With international coverage of the Middle East focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the war in Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, and the financial markets of the Persian Gulf States, little attention is given to one of the region's poorest countries, Yemen. The few spikes in media coverage of Yemen over the past few years are all related to fears of al-Qaida presence.

In collaboration with the Hand in Hand Initiative, Ghaida'a al-Absi will organize a new media training course for female politicians, activists, and human right workers in order to bring a new perspective to the Arabic-language blogosphere and to build an online network of Yemeni gender activists. It is fitting that today, on the 98th anniversary of International Women's Day, we announce al-Absi's initiative to bring more women's voices to the internet. The deteriorating status of women's rights in Yemen is frequently documented and discussed, but rarely do women themselves take part in those discussions. By reaching out to NGO's and political parties throughout Yemen al-Absi aims to change that.

Please join me in congratulating and welcoming the newest five grantee projects to our community.