By: Ruthie Ackerman

A long time has passed since my last update and so many amazing things have happened for Ceasefire Liberia.

First off, Ceasefire Liberia celebrated its one year anniversary last month! It’s been an amazing year: We have formed partnerships with other fantastic organizations, we’ve been profiled a number of times in the media, we have raised friends, recruited bloggers and even were in Santiago, Chile earlier this month for the Global Voices Citizen Media summit. One of the most exciting moments was when I met Nat Nyuan-Bayjay, Ceasefire Liberia’s blog manager, for the first time in the year we have been working together online. Isn’t it amazing when online and offline worlds converge? I met so many online friends in Chile, many whom I only knew from the Twitter handles. Another bonus from the trip: Global Voices donated a video camera to the Ceasefire project so our bloggers can start to work on video. So look for those soon!

Last month, a group of students from the Graduate Program in International Affairs at New School University undertook the preliminary planning and scoping for a multi-university support project targeted toward the Liberian independent media. The team’s Practicum assignment was to develop an initial look at what a web portal might look like that would support the project. The team also developed a survey to address specific questions regarding the needs of the independent media in the run-up to the 2011 election. These students came out to Staten Island to see the Ceasefire Liberia, meet some of our bloggers, and get some first-hand feedback from the Liberian community to understand the media environment both during the war years and after.

Also in April, Ceasefire Liberia was at Africa Gathering in Washington DC, where I learned about other great work being done on the African continent and met many of my heroes from the web. I was extremely excited to speak to Bill Zimmerman of Limbe Labs, who was kind enough to let me pick his brain about the role technology is playing in changing young people’s lives in Cameroon.

And now for the drumroll please- Ceasefire Liberia in the news. Here is a list of all our media mentions since my last check in six months ago:

The Paley Media Center profiled Ceasefire Liberia on its blog Think Social

Michelle Garcia of CUNY TV profiled Ceasefire Liberia’s Staten Island project

Tevah Platt of the Staten Island Advance profiled Ceasefire Liberia’s newest project, Ceasefire, which will launch this summer

Kevin Rennie captured on video Nat’s presentation about Ceasefire Liberia in Santiago (It was amazing and now you can see it for yourself!)

Nat interviewed for Future Challenges

Interview with Saki G. for Pocket Cultures

Interview with Boimah JV Boimah for Pocket Cultures

Lonely Planet featured Ceasefire Liberia in their “Blogs We Like” section

Here is a piece in German (!) but don’t worry if you don’t know German because there is a cute photo of Nat and I to look at.

And last but not least, the Kellogg Foundation gave us a grant to start a new arm of Ceasefire Liberia called Ceasefire, which will focus on creating a citizen media project for African immigrant and African-American youth in Staten Island based on the Ceasefire Liberia model. Look for that project to launch this summer!

Thanks for reading and supporting us!