Last night the facilitators and participants of HiperBarrio organized a multimedia event at the San Vicente Ferrer Parish in San Javier La Loma, Colombia. Over 100 people showed up, which, given the size of La Loma, felt like the entire town.

The newly trained bloggers, podcasters, and videobloggers of HiperBarrio showed off the movies that they have been producing, the photographs that they have been posting online, and the articles they have written. I am certain that it was the first time that the residents of La Loma saw their own daily reality, as documented by their sons, daughters, and friends, displayed on a big screen.

And they were clearly impressed. As I was hiding in the back of the room with my videocamera, I had the satisfaction of hearing the audience members exclaim how beautifully the photographs and videos were produced and giggle when some embarrassing moment was caught on film for all eternity. Not only did we celebrate the new media skills of the HiperBarrio participants, but they also shared their offline talents. Milthon entertained with one of his infamous clown routines, Sady had people dancing and clapping along when he played clarinet with his band, and Jorge amazed all with an incredible hip-hop performance which mentioned the names of every HiperBarrio weblog. Last night the residents of La Loma realized just how much talent the youth of their small working-class community has cultivated. And, thanks to the internet, the rest of the world is starting to realize as well.

Before the event concluded, we also watched a video which was recorded the previous evening in El Alto, Bolivia, where the participants of Voces Bolivianas sent video messages to La Loma in order to establish stronger links between the two outreach projects. You can view the video here - English subtitles will hopefully be available in the coming week.

Voces Bolivianas

Thursday night was the closing ceremony for the first pilot project of Voces Bolivianas. Diplomas were handed out to all of the 20+ new citizen journalists and prizes were awarded to some of the most-dedicated bloggers. But, perhaps most exciting, was the announcement that this week Voces Bolivianas will carry on with two new workshops. One will focus on women bloggers in El Alto while the other will be held in Santa Cruz and facilitated by Jessica. Make sure not to miss Rezwan's latest feature post on VB and you can see photos of the closing ceremony on the Voces Bolivianas website.

Nari Jibon

After a brief break during the holiday season, Nari Jibon's young women bloggers of Dhaka, Bangladesh are back at work. Just a few days ago the Nari Jibon participants were visited by Shawn of The Uncultured Project. Forty-four of Nari Jibon's students showed up to the workshop where they learned how to upload videos to YouTube and create podcasts. Shawn also shared his experiences of visiting areas that were devastated by Cyclone Sidr and showed them videos and pictures of his trips. Shawn says that he will visit Nari Jibon again in the near future to help them expand their new media knowledge.

Neighbourhood Diaries

For anyone wanting to learn some of the most original and innovative ways to start a local new media workshop, the project blog of Neighbourhood Diaries is practically a manual. Though Neighbourhood Diaries got off to a late start compared to some of the other first round grantees, we are slowly but surely becoming better acquainted with all of their talented participants. Make sure not to miss Rezwan's recent feature on the Neighbourhood Diaries project.

Think Build Change Salone

The Thing Build Change Salone, which has armed NGO interns with blogs to describe their experiences in helping rebuild Sierra Leone after years of civil war, was confronted with all the obstacles that could be expected of a project based in a country that is still rebuilding its infrastructure and institutions. Even so, thanks to the TBCS participants, we are able to become much more familiar with Sierra Leone than would otherwise be possible.

I recently heard the wonderful news from project leader Vickie Remoe-Doherty that Sierra Visions recently received a grant from the Internet Society to establish a digital village in Freetown. With ready and consistent internet access, we will surely be hearing much more from the TBCS interns in the months to come. Once again, Rezwan's feature article on TBCS is a must-read.

Five New Projects

Of course, one of the most exciting developments to cap off this extraordinary week has been getting to know the project facilitators of our five new projects based in Uruguay, Jamaica, Iran, Madagascar, and Kenya. Deserving special mention is Repacted, a citizen media project in Nakuru, Kenya which combines the techniques of Magnet Theater with the power of new media tools. Over the past few weeks, they have been instrumental in encouraging peace and conflict resolution in the aftermath of Kenya's post-election crisis. They received special mention from popular Kenyan blogger Daudi Were.

We have witnessed an incredibly sense of community take place among the participants of each of the first five Rising Voices projects. They have become more than just bloggers. In fact, through their weblogs, they have become much better friends. Over the next six months hopefully those friendships will extend from one project to the next, over borders, differing cultures and languages.

It is worth getting to know each new blogger not just as a source of under-reported foreign news, but also as a neighbor and friend in our rapidly shrinking world. Get to know Carmen, a lover of poetry and literature, from the hillside working class neighborhood of La Loma in Medellín, Colombia. Discover the story of Suso - La Loma's local recyclables collector. Meet Cristina Quisbert who now blogs almost every day from the world's highest major city, El Alto, Bolivia.

Or head to Dhaka, Bangladesh where the Nari Jibon center is training young women like Sifat Binte Qaiyum and Ayesha Parveen how to document their personal and community stories with online media.

Just southwest of Bangladesh we find the Neighbourhood Diaries project taking place in Kolkata, India. Though the ten participants in the neighbourhood of Bow Bazaar have yet to start writing on their own blogs, project leader Sahar Romani has introduced us to each one. Take 16-year-old Surojit Mitra, for example:

Surojit is a student at Bow Bazaar Highschool. During his free time he loves to coreograph dances and listen to music. He is known for his laughter and his coreography in Sanlaap programmes. One thing that no one knows about him is that, once he failed an exam.

In a later post we learn that Surojit's favorite landmark of Bow Bazaar is the Punjabi Hotel. Here's his description:

As soon as you reach the Punjabi Hotel, what you hear first is the sound of conversations and the din of people who are going in. A light wind brings the smell of various food items to my nose. You can see shoe shops, the vegetables in the market being bought and sold. The touch of food items from the hotel and the fuchka. It is a very old hotel. Earlier it was renowned, everyone knew of it. Besides, the proprietor of the place was a friend of my mother’s.

Finally, make sure to head to the Think Build Change Salone in Freetown, Sierra Leone. After a vicious, decade-long civil war made Sierra Leone the least developed country in the world, a group of motivated young interns - such as Noah Dauda and Daniella Wilson - are documenting their efforts to rebuild the country. Make sure to check out Noah Dauda's photographs of microfinance traders and Emmanuel Joseph's experience producing a documentary in the eastern provinces of Kenema, Kailahun and Kono.

Looking Ahead

As you can see, in just six months, each project has made amazing progress in training new groups of bloggers in underrepresented communities. A sense of purpose and community has developed within each group.

In just a few days we'll announce the latest round of microgrant winners. Five new projects will join our current community of outreach trainers and the momentum and good will they've established. In the coming months we'll focus more on encouraging interaction between all 10 projects and highlighting the similarities the share.

We hope that you'll follow along.

The person behind this project, Vickie (AKA “Nasratha”) explains the challenges she faced and how she was able to overcome them:

“One of the biggest challenges I knew I would face with the internship program was the placement of interns with local organizations. Inexperienced students are primarily seen as a liability in any professional work environment but I also knew that offering to pay the student’s stipend would remove some of the anti-intern feeling.

…I never did get the list I wanted so I had to return to the internet in search of local NGOs. I made visits to several offices that had been closed for over two or three years and no one had bothered to put down the sign.”

Edward Komba Chaka (23) is a 2nd year pre-med student at the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS). He was placed in a National HIV/AIDS Control Program (NACP) at Connaught Hospital, Freetown. He explains his work experiences in the post “HIV is a Virus, not a moral issue”. He shares some catchy slogans to prevent aids.

Noah Dauda (25) a third year student of Financial Services at the Institute of Public Administration and Management (IPAM) and Alhassan Conteh, 22, a first year student of DES Institute of Business & Management were paired up to research the implementation of micro-finance in Freetown. Noah shares the state of development and background of micro-lending programs in Sierra Leone:

“Sierra Leone has experienced a high rate of failure of developmental projects over years. These failures did not begin with the onset of civil war. It must be noted that, the near absence of development for many years, declining per capita incomes, increasing competition from a rising population for limited resources and poor governance have contributed greatly to the erosion of civil society and the emergence of conditions that facilitated open conflict. It is this reality that the past government has been trying to combat with its National Action Plan for Poverty Alleviation, its programme of macro-economic reform supported by international development agencies and its policies of support for the private sector.”

He describes the traditional Osusu credit system and posts pictures of some traders who are using microfinance.

Noah Suluku (21) and Daniella Wilson (19), two Secondary School students, were placed on independent projects to highlight the lives of street children in different areas of the city. Noah writes:

“There are two categories (of street children). The first category is defined as children who stay with their parents /guardians at home but who go on to the street each morning to socialize or to earn money for themselves and sometime they return home in the evening. The second category is children who have abandoned their home and are permanently on the street living and working on the street. They are not under any parental care. Both categories are vulnerable to child abuse and child right violation.”

He noted some miseries and experience of those street children. He also posted some pictures of those underprivileged children.

Kadi Yata Kandeh (26) is a brilliant third year student of Nutrition & Dietetics at Fourah Bay College. She writes about her experience in the Conference on the Status of the Implementation of TRC- Truth & Reconciliation Commission Recommendations where she acted as a member of Technical Committee in Planning:

“It was an educative program, it gave me the opportunity to know about various civil society organizations and interact with so many. What interested me were the discussions between the civil society groups on various topics.”

Lastly we read an update from Emmanuel Joseph (24), a student of NJala University who worked as an intern in Peace and Development Corp Program, a project under National commission for social action (NaCSA). He lists the experiences gathered during his trips to the eastern, northern and southern Provinces of Sierra Leone and concludes with:

My documentary visit to the provinces have actually increase my understand(ing) of the provinces and how decentralizing work is being complemented by council and how working condition is like and the challenges of the different kind of bosses that one may encounter during work. Amazing among my discovery of Sierra Leone is that my country is a beautiful country and such build my interest of working in Sierra Leone to aid in developing my country.

The Think Build Change Salone (TBCS) initiative seeks to help rebuild post-civil war Sierra Leone by providing ICT training to young people placed at paid internship positions with local non-profit organizations so that they may gain work experience and contribute to development projects.

In September Vickie Remoe-Doherty, of the Think Build Change Salone, described the challenges she was facing when seeking out young, capable and passionate interns from the capital city, Freetown.

Vickie was finally able to find 14 young leaders to advance the TBCS initiative and you can view their profiles here. They are being placed at various non-profit organizations around Sierra Leone. When they become comfortable with the new media tools, they will start documenting their experiences in those organizations. 

The first experience was logged by Kadi Yata Kandeh (26), a third year student of Nutrition & Dietetics at Fourah Bay College with excellent academic records. Last month she posted the profile of her intern organization ‘Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET)’. This month she writes about her experience in the Training of Trainers Workshop at Bo titled “Engendering Conflict Early Warning and Response”.  The training advocates women to participate actively and contribute substantially to peace consolidation not only in Sierra Leone but throughout the Mano River Sub-region. 

She shares:

“The Workshop was a challenge for me because it was my first workshop on residential (where I had to stay over night), and on Peace Building. I was one of the reporters, so I had to be attentive to all speakers for valuable contributions.”

Read more of her experiences.

Sahr Emmanuel Joseph is a second year Economics student at Njala University. He joined as an intern in Peace and Development Corp Program, a project under National commission for social action (NaCSA). In his informative post he describes his role and experiences there. He has some advices to the potential interns and opines:

“Information and technology knowledge is actually low in the country as stated by Siera Vision President I would recommend if donors agree to fund them let the organization provides information and technology training for student in the various university by organising free citizen media workshop for student in the various university and also organising educative programme that will enhance technology capacity of the students.”

Noah Suluku is the second youngest intern at age 21. He posts some pictures of the “Children of Bay” picking through garbage.

Bangladesh:

In the second part we take a closer look at Nari Jibon’s recent blogging activities. They are arranging regular fortnightly meetings about their progress. In the last meeting on the November 10^th they summarized that since the beginning they have posted 105 articles (both Bangla and English) and 32 more in the pipeline for editing.

They arranged a training program for twelve new and old bloggers (Nari Jibon students/work-study students), covering digital photography, the basics of blogging, how to write a post, what to write, etc.

We have seen more blogger profiles posted to their Bangla and English blogs. The new bloggers think that the most important part of this organization is the Nari Cybercafé where the PCs are situated and they can blog there. They discovered blogging only after coming to Nari Jibon and they are now happy and eager to share their stories to the world.

Sherin Sultana thinks that because she is from a middle class family she cannot be exceptional. She describes the limitations of being a member of a middle class family:

“We don’t have abundance of money. If our watches become useless, we change only the belt or battery and change those again and again. But we never change the dial or buy a new one. If our shoes get useless we try once again to add another sole. We can’t expect more than enough to our necessity. Our self respect is very high so we can’t want something to anybody. If we don’t have anything then we try to get those by our own ability. Our life is measured and tied by the circle of middle class.”

But she is optimistic and cherishes the values middle class lives possess: sorrows, pains, love, affection and unlimited respect.

Nina Sultana went to a slum in Dhaka and experienced their poverty and difficult life styles up close. The slum people live in a dirty environment. They are deprived of fresh food, water and good shelter. They suffer from hunger, malnutrition and different kinds of diseases. She thinks their poverty leads some of them to break laws and engage in mugging and stealing.

Hasina Akhter describes [bn] her ancestral village, Bogadia, situated in Noakhali district, which boasts of having most of the basic amenities like electricity, water, and gas.

Nari Jibon’s Dr. Kathryn B Ward posted about Justice for Nadine and Rahela, two Bangladeshi victims of domestic violence and aligned Nari Jibon blogs with the Bangladeshi blogosphere who are advocating this issue quite vocally. Finally words of concern from Dr. Ward center on the deadly Hurricane Sidr which made landfall in Bangladesh Thursday night.

Their next training will cover the operation of video cameras and digital cameras for some Nari Jibon staff members and also for some students. We expect to see more photo and video blogging from Nari Jibon bloggers soon.

In total we received 142 project proposals from over 40 different countries. The overwhelming response is a testament to the global enthusiasm for citizen media that stretches from Southern Chile to rural Nigeria, from a village in Mali without electricity to urban Mongolia; from an orphanage in Ethiopia to a center for disabled HIV/AIDS patients in Kenya. The list goes on and on, but what all of the project proposals have in common is a desire to enable their communities to tell their own stories, to write their own first draft of history, to document their traditions and culture before they are washed away by the tides of globalization.

Over the next month I'll be introducing each of the following projects in more detail. We'll also be announcing the Rising Voices website where you will be able to follow the developments of each project and each project participant. Without further ado, the first round grantees of Rising Voices:

Vickie Remoe-Doherty - Sierra Leone:

Vickie is helping coordinate the Think Build Change Salone initiative which seeks to help rebuild post-civil war Sierra Leone by providing training and work experience to Sierra Leonean youth with paid internship positions at local non-profit organizations. This year's interns will be required to record their experiences using weblogs, audio, and video. By documenting their experiences at various non-profit organizations around Sierra Leone they will cover issues of health, environment, democracy, post conflict reconstruction, women’s issues, information technology, education, government accountability & transparency, and community development. Once the interns feel comfortable with the tools themselves, they will organize several workshops around the country teaching citizen media to other groups.

Juliana Rincón, Jorge Montoya, and Álvaro Ramirez - Medellín Colombia:

This project started out as two separate proposals. Juliana [ES] and Jorge [ES] had set out to do a number of new media training workshops in collaboration with an outreach initiative (.doc) of Medellín's public library system. Álvaro [ES] proposed to organize a video blogging workshop [ES] in the working class neighborhood of La Loma de San Javier. Fortunately, the two groups agreed to share their resources, tools, and time so that both projects can go forward.

Kazi Rafiq Islam and Kathryn Ward - Dhaka, Bangladesh:

Kazi Rafiq Islam and Kathy Ward are the Coordinator and Executive Director of the Nari Jibon Project in Dhaka, Bangladesh. As you can see from the website, the organization is already involved in outstanding work with young women in Dhaka. With the help of the Rising Voices microgrant, they will introduce Bangladeshi girls and women to blogging, photography and video-blogging by incorporating blogging assignments into existing English, computer, and Bangla classes. You can see some examples of what is to come at Bangladesh from our View.

Mario Duran, Eduardo Ávila, Hugo Miranda - El Alto, Bolivia:

Mario [ES], Eduardo [ES], and Hugo [ES] will organize a series of four bi-weekly sessions that will last three hours each. They will provide hands on training at a local internet cafe in El Alto, Bolivia and encourage participants to write about their lives, families, and community and communicate to the rest of Bolivia and the world that, for the most part, the daily life in the impoverished city of El Alto is just like daily life anywhere else.

Bishan Samaddar, Sahar Romani, Aparna Ray - Kolkata, India:

Bishan and Sahar are the coordinators of Kalam: Margins Write, a creative writing program for marginalized youth in India. They've already done amazing work using print to encourage creativity and self-expression with poetry and creative writing. This Rising Voices microgrant will help establish a new project, “Neighborhood Diaries”, which will train underprivileged youth living in Kolkata's slums to be citizen journalists. As they wrote on their application, “Often urban slums in India are misrepresented and sensationalized.” By empowering young residents who live there to tell their own stories, they will gain power on how their community is portrayed. You can find out more about Kalam: Margins Write on their weblog.

You'll be hearing a lot more about these five exciting projects in the weeks and months to come. The next round of Rising Voices funding will take place in September. The application process will be made more public and more participatory so that Global Voices readers can offer their input on the proposals, make suggestions, and even offer help and resources.

If you are interested in providing funding to help support more of these inspiring projects, please write to outreach@globalvoicesonline.org.