Rising Voices

A couple weeks ago we spoke with Lova Rakotomalala, one of the four coordinators of the FOKO Madagascar blog outreach program. This week we feature a video interview with Lova’s blog outreach partner in crime, Mialy Andriamananjara.

As Joan Rasafimaharo recently described on the FOKO project blog, a group of high school students belonging to the United Nations Club put together this video to celebrate the United Nation’s social causes. The film has been entered into the Film Your Issue contest.

At We Media Miami I was able to sit and talk with Lova Rakotomalala, one of the coordinators of the FOKO Madagascar blog outreach program. We recorded this brief interview in which Lova describes the genesis of FOKO and how the organization plans on fulfilling its mission.

Following recent workshops on how to use Flickr and how to video-blog, the FOKO team in Madagascar has been active documenting the recent flooding from Cyclone Ivan and their recent tree-planting in the region of Andranovelona with the Namana SeraSera Group. This video is from there trip to Andranovelona. Sub-titles are available in English.

Jorge is one of about 20 young people in the peripheral working class neighborhood of San Javier La Loma who are using citizen media to rescue the forgotten history of their community. His song “ConVerGentes” which he performed in this video in early January 2008 discusses the potential of using participatory media to rescue the forgotten history and culture of local communities.

Cristina Quisbert shares her experiences of being a member of Voces Bolivianas. Cristina was also featured in an interview published here a couple months ago. You can read translations of posts by Cristina and fellow Voces Bolivianas participants on the English version of the Voces Bolivianas site.

One thing you’ll notice immediately if you visit the outlying community of La Loma in Medellín, Colombia is that nearly the entire community has the same three or four last names. One of the most common is “Paniagua” - the mythical origin of which is explained in the above video by blogger and talented musician Dneiber Sady.

Vandalism or a legitimate form of cultural expression? Is tagging a form of visual contamination or does the writing on the wall tell us something more about the communities we live in? Jorge Jurado meditates on the significance and motivation behind the words on the walls in La Loma, Medellin, Colombia.

This week we look at some brilliant articles from Nari Jibon’s women bloggers. They discuss the menace of wedding dowries, which make the lives of poor families difficult by forcing parents to consider female children as burdens. Also, one NJ participant dreams of becoming president and changing the present society to an enlightened, educated and dowry-free society.

The clip of the young participants - produced using Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker - shows them explaining the ‘recipe’ of how to improve city-wide communication using participatory tools like blogs. At the end of the clip we are shown screenshots of the participants’ weblogs (linked to at the right-hand side of the workshop website).