Rising Voices

It all started in 2006 when well known Bolivian bloggers Mario Duran, Hugo Miranda, and Eduardo Ávila envisioned a digital literacy project for the underrepresented communities of Bolivia. With the help of a Rising Voices micro grant and the passion and commitment of the Bolivian bloggers the project had expanded from El Alto to other cities in Bolivia like Santa Cruz and Beni where blogger volunteers imparted blog, video, photography and podcast workshops to hundreds of Bolivians. The project has recently released two manuals in Spanish language on how to open a blog in Wordpress and Blogger platforms.

Rising Voices bloggers joined the global chorus this week as several responded to Barack Obama’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election in the United States. We hear comparisons with elections in Colombia and Bolivia, and a blogger in Kenya shares his worries about the security of Obama’s grandmother living in Kogelo, Kenya.

Bolivia’s recent social unrest was covered by the Voces Bolivianas Bloggers. They posted reports, photos and videos of the march and other protests by tens of thousands of peasants, miners, coca-growers, and other supporters of the government of Evo Morales.

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

We present to you the first Rising Voices Blog Carnival. We requested articles from different Rising Voices grantees communities. The topic is “What is the biggest celebration in your community each year?”

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

Voces Bolivianas project started citizen media workshops in the city of El Alto in Bolivia in September 2007. Since then its blog outreach workshops spread out and covered almost two third of the country and had a lot of success. Through use of blogs many people of Bolivia, especially some of the indigenous population now have their voices to tell their stories to the world and fight discrimination.

Voces Bolivianas has recently started its outreach workshop in Trinidad city of Beni, a remote district in the Amazon region. 19 participants were taught the basics of blogs and they opened their own blogs.

We hear the term ‘citizen journalism’ almost everywhere. But to be precise, what is it? Why do we need to embrace citizen journalism? What effects does it have on a society and how can it give a voice to the people who are under reported in the mainstream media?

We will find the answer to those questions in this feature and learn how the Rising Voices projects are embracing citizen journalism.

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