Pavel Kutsev and his wife

A few months ago, Rising Voices wrote about the attempts of some Ukrainian cities to ban substitution therapy programs in municipal medical establishments. Their reasoning was that an addiction to one drug cannot be treated with another drug. However, many experts concluded that this decision was aimed mostly at earning the support of voters, rather than solving medical problems.

After the city Sevastopol put the ban in place, a few other cities in Ukraine introduced the ban in municipal hospitals. Pavel Kutsev commented on this. He says:

With the upcoming elections, the situation with substitution therapy is getting worse and worse. All methadone programs are under threat. It started in Crimea, and now we have cases in Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk…How would you like this newspaper headline: “Methadone Monsters Ruled by the Hand of Evil?” This is from one of the newspapers from the Sumy region…So we are quite concerned about all this…

In his overview Pavel named another opponent of substitution therapy in Ukraine. These opponents are various religious groups working in the field of drugs and HIV/AIDS prevention. These types of organizations receive a great deal of financial support from local governments. Here is what Pavel had to say about this situation:

By the way, most government funding for the social support of drug addicts goes to various religious organizations. These guys' motto is “Say No to Methadone Hell”…Oh yeah, of course, they are the saviors…Well, if you think about it all, you start to doubt whether substitution therapy programs will survive in Ukraine at all.

Pavel also refers to a problem that seems to be of greatest importance to him: whether the drug used for substitution therapy in Ukraine is the right one. He points out that the drug that the Ukrainian government has purchased for substitution therapy is not the best available drug, as it has a fairly short time of excretion from the body.

According to Ukrainian law, participants of substitution therapy programs can receive these medications only once a day and only in certain medical establishments. A drug with a period of excretion of less than 24 hours essentially means that those taking these drugs experience abstinence syndrome (or withdrawal) for a few hours a day. Pavel says:

To tell the truth, I had started feeling better for a while. My daily dose was 180 mg. In a week my old problems returned… tolerance, shortness of breath, insomnia…

It's been almost a year now since my wife and I started “adjusting” to methadone. To tell the truth, we still need to take antidepressants as the medication just does not suit patients like us well. We are not talking now about the side effects. We just feel that there is no reason for us to increase the daily dose more and more…It does not matter how large your dose is if the active substance will be excreted from the body in 12-16 hours. The only alternative that would work in this case is to consume the medication at least twice a day, in the morning and at night.

According to our estimation, almost all 400 people from our methadone site consume other drugs along with the provided medications. Every third person still shoots up. Others take various pills. This is because in the morning you have such a severe feeling of cold turkey that you just need another drug. You cannot call this a treatment! Please understand! If you are a drug addict and every morning you have abstinence syndrome you just do not feel the effect of the therapy.

The idea of substitution therapy is that while taking medications the person is getting used to sober life and forgets about the nightmare of cold turkey syndrome.

I just need to take replacement therapy medications, like vitamins, to get out of the euphoria habit, which is called “psychological dependency.” I just need to take medications that would support my body and let me function without cold turkey syndrome…for at least 30 hours. Only in this case will the therapy be successful…

What happens if in 15 hours you start feeling pain again and start thinking about a new dose? You cannot even complain to medical personnel as they do not take you seriously. They call the medication they give you “a drug.” Naturally if we consume this medication we are under the influence, we are not adequate…so why to listen to us…

Finally, Pavel sums up his thoughts:

The only option for drug addicts to defend their interests is self organization. Only staying united we can be healthy.

Rising Voices grantee Empowerment of Yemeni Women Activists in New Media Techniques (EWAMT) has organized two more workshops in June. After the success of the first workshop in May, the project received requests from many NGOs to include their candidates in the next workshops. Even some enthusiastic men accused of discrimination as the workshops are available only for women. Ghaida'a al_Absi, the EWAMT project leader writes:

I did not expect to have this large number of girls who want to have the knowledge of blogging and social networks, so we enforced to looking for a volunteer to be just responsible for receiving these emails and registration.

In 3-4 June, 2009 we hold our second workshop for 10 activists from various NGOs at Youth Economic Development Center. This time we had added energizing exercises to the workshop, and the trainer Basheer al-Samawy made some funny exercises to the trainees.

Ghaida'a continues:

In the next day, we finished the other techniques in blogging then we made discussion in which way we will use our blogs to serve our community. We gave them examples of Yemeni bloggers and showed them their blogs. Moreover, we talked about face book and YouTube, and they all made account in face book and joined the EWAMT group in facebook.

The third workshop was completed during 17-18th of June. Here is a slide show of the pictures taken during the worshop:

The Yemeni society is conservative, and many families do not accept the photo of their daughters to be published. But some of the members were brave enough to be photographed.

Here is a list of the blogs opened during the first workshop:

• Or Illaftrain by أم إيلاف
• Rights and freedoms in Yemen - Group Blog
• 2jayzworld by Jumana
• Yemeni Notes by Ebtisam Al-Mohmmdy
• You And Your Home by Bushra
• Dewdrops by صديقة الورود
• Yemen Al-Saeed by Huda
• Powerful by Alaqwiyaa
• Shells by Pearl
• Life Maker Foundation Yemen - Group Blog
• Rose by Flowers
• We are the youth of today by Princess

Here is the list of blogs from the second workshop:

• Man by انسان
• Ambitious project by Kholoud
• Capacity constraints in the creative by قدراتي
• Sense by Rahaf
• Pearl beads by Abeer Aeriqi
• Our Environment by باسمك نحيا
• Our by Lena
• Beautiful One by Haifa'a
• Friendship by Soad

Here are some more blogs by EWAMT members and facilitators:

• Lamya Sky by Lamya
• Moon Candles by Tears in the sunset
• Tips by رجاوي
• Your health the most important by Hopeful
• Lines by Albatool
• alsnnono by dommo3 (shorouq alnono)
• Meet by Smart
• Prospects by Paths
• across by Jamal

There has been a number of blog posts published in the above mentioned blogs from Yemen. I will try to highlight some of them. But please check out these in details including their project blog using any web based translation tool like Google Translate.

Huda writes about the flow of large number of Somalian refugees in Yemen and the negligence of the authorities to address their plights.

Soad is delighted to participate in the workshop:

Trained, thanks to the excellent training and I benefited a lot. I wish to be an active participant in this blog and thank you very much.

She also writes in own blog about personal friendship. Life Maker Foundation Yemen writes about addiction in Yemen.

Lena writes about the rights of children to live safely. Rahaf discusses what it means to be a street children.

Bushra writes how to grow confidence of your kids.

Jumana writes in English about her perception of Islam in the USA.

Prescription for a substitution therapy drug

Drop-In Center, the Ukrainian organization uniting people living with drug addictions, has cause for celebration. The Ministry of Health of Ukraine set in motion a system that allows participants of substitution therapy programs to receive their medication in drugstores with a prescription. This move could make life significantly easier and save time for many replacement therapy patients.

The current system forces drug users to go to the therapy site daily to receive medications; they must consume the drug in front of medical staff. In a big city like Kyiv, commuting to the site can take up to two hours each way. Drop-In Center activists have often discussed this issue, repeatedly insisting that for many patients the system poses an obstacle to obtaining a full-time job. The system also doesn't allow patients to leave town, as it is almost impossible to get the therapy in another city. In addition, it limits where a drug user can receive medical assistance. If a drug user is hospitalized he or she still needs to consume substitution therapy medications, but there is only one hospital in Kyiv that is authorized to provide them.

According to the new Ministry of Health regulations, Buprenorphine, a medication used for substitution therapy, is part of the list of drugs that can be obtained with a prescription. Drop-In Center activists believe that methadone, the other widespread substitution therapy medication, should also be included in this list though.

There were a few posts about this news on Web pages administrated by the Drop-In Center. For example, the harm reduction Web site “Motylek” published a statement from the Association of Substitution Therapy Participants:

As of the end of May 2009, there were 3800 participants of substitution therapy programs in Ukraine. Out of them, 850 people use Buprenorphine and 2950 people use methadone…

We welcome the new regulations of the Ministry of Health… We hope that the provision of Buprenorphine via drugstores will make it possible to break the “serfdom” of therapy participants and help reduce the workload for doctors and nurses on the sites…

We are planning to continue our advocacy to encourage the distribution of replacement therapy medications via prescription for all Ukraine sites and are ready to help all people interested in this issue.

The news also initiated a discussion. For instance, Olga Beliayeva wrote:

Guys, I realized how tiring it was to go to the site everyday to receive the medications after I got my first prescription. Now I can receive prescribed medications for weekends and when I need to travel. The bad news is that I had to reduce my daily dose of medication to satisfy the conditions of the new regulations….

It is our life and we need to have the option to receive methadone and Buprenorphine via a pharmacy…We need to have an opportunity to plan our time without regards to the work hours of the replacement therapy site…

Mazay wrote:

So now we can get Buprenorphine in a drugstore. It is great. But what about another medication that belongs to the same opiate group? What about methadone? This situation is strange. For some reason, it is not on the list of the new regulations…. Perhaps we should lobby for its inclusion in the list more actively…

FOKO also scores cooperation with like-minded activists : New York based Malagasy singer Razia Said and FOKO are now walking hand in hand in to promote conservation awareness.

FOKO is helping to set up new media facilities at the Press Center in Diego writes Stéfane. Another feat of the project is successfully conducting a blog and new media workshop for IST students.

On Saturday, June 13th, Stéfane, Pati, Tahina, Andry, Affick (SAVA's coordinator) and Ariniania together took the workshop.

Group Photo during the IST workshop

Tahina writes:

The IST (fr) is a renowned private institute located in Ampasampito (not far away from downtown) that proposes several fields of studies to its students.

The workshop went well in a good ambiance and the connection speed didn’t spoil it too much. We noticed that few of them were more curious than the others and that led Andry to jump on the basic uses of Twitter (yes, they wanted more and more) after being through with Wordpress.

Ariniaina writes how they lured participant as the event was not well informed:

One of the guys asked what was that “blog” mean. So I said “if you want to know more, you are invited to join us at the ESPATEL (the name of the cybercafé)”.

The FOKO bloggers are prolific in their writing and you will be amazed to learn many aspects of Madagascar from them. Ariniaina caught the joy of the Malagasy children playing kite in words and pictures, witnessed a fire at Esplanade Analakely, describes the works of the project that cleans water of Marais Masay swamp, writes about a Rickshaw manufacturer at Antsirabe and the business of wrapping gifts on the mother day. And the most interesting one, do you know “how to make a candle last?”:

The candle is covered with newspaper. Fold a sheet of newspaper, wrap up the candle with it. Doing so will help you have candle light for more than two hours. Clever!

Moonlightgirl portrays the quiet and peaceful country side in Madagascar. The blogger also writes about the damaged roads in Madagascar, driving on which can be a nightmare for everyone.

Pati writes about a sad incident; an university student was raped by robbers.

Tahina recalls the traumas of the political unrest in Madagascar, which started last January. This has divided the country and now even raising the green-white-red flag of Madagascar on the independence day can be interpreted as a poltical statement.

Besorongola writes that a recent multilateral negotiation to ease the tensions in Madagascar has failed. Fanantenana at Hope For Madagascar was skeptical about this negotiation:

The crux of the matter is that the foreigners behind the dialogue don’t want major changes happen that could bring real democracy to the country but rather put fat in the fire, Divide To Rule. The EU presents the country with an ultimatum again with the organization of an hasty election and Andry Rajoelina swallow the bait in his conquest for international recognition though already and widely recognized by all Malagasy, what’s matter the native Malagasy or the Europeans .

Andrydago at The Cyber Observer had the opportunity to attend a live broadcast of the US president Barack Obama's speech. The broadcast of the speech was shown at the ACC (American cultural center), Antanimena in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. He wrote about his reactions on the speech.

Raslmetal writes that Madagascar has entered in an era of strikes, when the strikes seem to be ubiquitous.

To celebrate Patrick's first anniversary of blogging, Joan took an interview of him:

Why did I start to blog?

To be frank, I don’t know. You know why? Because when Mr. Stéphane and Mrs. Valerian called me with my team from BUEC for the first time, I never even heard about that “BLOG” Then when I started and surfed around the old bloggers blog at that time, one thing came out from my mind: it’s the only one way where can I make my voice heard, the only one way to make BUEC known, the only one way to have a lot of friends in very short time, the only one way that I can listen from all around the world. That’s why I became fan of blogging.

To get more updates from the FOKO bloggers please visit their Netvibes page and their Flickr account.

The Voces Bolivianas Team. Photo by David Sasaki

The members of Voces Bolivianas (Bolivian Voices) are delighted to win an honorary mention in the 2009 Prix Ars Electronica awards. This international recognition will certainly boost their enthusiasm towards blogging. They congratulated [es] the Hiperbarrio team for winning the Golden Nica in the digital communication category at the same event.

Rising Voices Director David Sasaki was in El Alto, Bolivia recently to greet the team and talk about the other Rising Voices projects. Mario Duran posts [es] about the 6th of June get together of the Voces Bolivianas. Here are some images.

Some of the Voces Bolivianas members wrote about different events and issues on Bolivia. Here is a quick look at them.

Alberto Medrano writes [es] about the Fiesta de Jesús del Gran Poder (Jesus Almighty), one of the larges celebrations in Bolivia outside the Carnival.

The Parade of Gran Poder, Image courtesy Alberto Medrano

Christina Quisbert posts some pictures and writes:

About 58 groups participate in this parade starting in the neighborhood called Cementerio dancing kilometers and kilometers until to arrive to downtown. It generally starts early in the morning about 7:00am. and ends 2:00am. on Sunday. Each group of dancers aproximately dances about five or six hours from the beginning until the end of the route.

Here is a video of the celebrations:

Hugo Miranda posted [es] the twitter messages and pictures uploaded by one of his friends @alvaromendez reporting the birth of his son Miguelito.

Christina Quisbert introduces [es] blogger Limachi Sabino:

With Bolivian Voices in late January this year we were able to find bloggers and bloggers of various cities in Bolivia Bolivian Voices Summit. Among them I had the fortune to meet Limachi Sabino, a member of the Puka Puka, Tarabuco in the department of Chuquisaca. On that occasion I commented on the music project that had begun with other young people from that community to form the group quechua de los Andes Puriy. Sometimes the distance or circumstances make initiatives like the community of Sabino remain invisible. However, we can put our bit to help this musical talent to proceed. The contact information for them is in the blog Progressive Indian.

Christina also writes about the descendants of Africans who arrived to South Americas during colonial times.

Rock Boliviano [es] continues to portray the rock scene of Bolivia. The blogger writes about a concert in Hernando Siles stadium, which is scheduled to take place today:

Concert JUNTUCHA arises from the need to support, disseminate and publicize the new Bolivian musicians. On this occasion of its 5th year celebrations 22 bands will perform on Saturday, June 13, 2009.

(All translations were done using machine translation)

Fortunately for Uruguay's education system, a group of dedicated volunteer programmers, instructors, and technologists have formed the Ceibal Jam! movement to develop applications for XO laptops that meet the specific needs of Uruguayan primary school instructors and students. (Rezwan has written previously about the first Ceibal Jam gathering last year.) Gabriel Eirea, a professor of engineering at the University of the Republic and a coordinator of Ceibal Jam!, describes the mission of the community:

I was able to attend last week's Ceibal Jam! gathering at the University of Montevideo in which approximately 50 volunteers came together to present the applications they have been developing, to propose new applications, and to both improve and document existing applications like Ceibal-Chess, EduBlog, and PlayGo.

As Gabriel Eirea emphasizes in the above video, one of the current priorities for Ceibal Jam is to develop small applications which can be used by instructors to teach a single concept over a few days; for example, an application that helps students learn the multiplication table, or to better understand the concept of fractions. In fact, Eirea himself was involved in the development of Conozco Uruguay, a simple application to help students improve their knowledge of Uruguay's geography.

With this in mind, Ana Cichero proposed a game for the XO laptop to make learning basic mathematic principles fun and interactive. Within minutes of her proposal several participants of the session were already writing code to make the proposal a program. Other sessions throughout the day introduced the basics of the Python coding language, how to develop with high performance graphics, and a proposal to create a game that teaches human rights to children. You can learn more about Ceibal Jam, download their programs for the Sugar operating system, and stay tuned to new developments on their website.

‘HiperBarrio' is a community of young bloggers that developed out of what were initially two independent initiatives in Medellín, Colombia: Álvaro Ramírez’s video blogging workshops and the media workshops of Juliana Rincón and Jorge Montoya. They then joined forces to form four groups whose activities included blogging, workshops and events. The ConVerGentes group has succeeded in establishing itself locally as well as getting integrated into international networks. Thanks to a very active lineup of offerings, “HiperBarrio” is in the process of expanding its activities both on site and far beyond. In going about this, the proprietors formed a partnership with the Universidad Católica del Norte. “HiperBario” has been singled out for recognition with the Golden Nica in the DIGITAL COMMUNITIES category.

Miralmundo writes [es]:

This is undoubtedly the main award given to Colombia in the field of media technology so far and the best recognition to a group of young people who have worked hard to create a virtual community that wants to show the world.

Cadaunadas reminds [es] that it is one of the most important awards in digital culture. In 2004 Wikipedia was awarded a Golden Nica in the category “Digital Communities”.

Blueandtanit describes [es] the reactions of the Hiperbarrio team after the news was broken:

The faces of surprise and joy were not long in coming, especially when we knew that was the highest prize in the category and an important symbolic and economic, is the first time Colombia won the prize in the category and a source of pride for all.

I share some of the photos taken yesterday, when we heard the news, since a picture is worth a thousand words, and mine have gone from the excitement.

Xady writes [es]:

Work, effort, love and continuity in social work and community, based on free tools on the Internet to show the world local stories.

Means always wanting the best, not just constantly working on our project of life but also in social life of the project. [..] This shows that “nothing is impossible”.

Catalina Restrepo at Cosas Del Alma writes [es]:

What is the prize?

The prize for me it means a recognition of the dreams that we have woven together. It is a way of showing us that this convergentes has allowed us to work from the difference, has made us grow as individuals and collectively.

The award also means a “continue to work with projects for a while.”

In June 2007 the Hiperbarrio collective started its workshops and our previous features depict its commendable works. Catalina Restrepo retrospects [es]:

The dream became a verb for excellence in every match in every workshop, every “chat”. La Loma's library was the space and the network to find a pretext, to discover that the letters, cameras and a computer, could form a perfect amalgamation.

Professor Álvaro Ramírez Ospina writes [es] that the award money will be used to carry out more outreach efforts to newer marginalized communities:

For me the award means first and foremost a great encouragement, but also greater responsibility. I see that drives us to take on major challenges such as those planned but we were unable to perform. I mean the idea of extending it to other communities with evidence that the Internet can be used in a healthy and productive manner and as a virtual territory where it is possible and urgent to create things new. Scope for the development of speech and artistic potential saved, all we have, and they rarely give us the opportunity to explore and enhance.

With 10 thousand euros of the prize can do several things: to support the expansion into the neighborhood and other places. Buy digital cameras, audio recorders and video make us that much needed, and have an amount to have with what to buy, occasionally, a snack for each group. Now that happens when the Convergence workshops are lengthening, and nobody wants to leave the library until you finish editing or polishing products diam not have a penny to be able to provide some food.

So far everything has been volunteering and idealism. We hope to professionalize certain tasks and the reward points to that.

Hiperbarrio's feat was recently featured [es] in Agencia Magazine & Der Standard [de].

Rising Voices also congratulates its grantee Voces Bolivianas (Bolivian Voices) for winning an honorary Mention in the 2009 Prix Ars Electronica awards.

(All translations were done using machine translation)

The XO-1 laptop. OLPC is now engineering the next version.

Designing the laptop, it turned out, was probably the easiest piece of the puzzle. OLPC founder and chairman Nicholas Negroponte had originally touted the XO as the “$100 laptop”, but in order to produce the machine at such a low cost they would need to convince dozens of national governments to purchase tens of millions of laptops. Instead, the program was until very recently only able to convince the government of one single country, Uruguay, which ordered 100,000 machines back in October of 2007 at $188 per machine. Fast-forward 20 months - and 200,000 more laptops - and the Technological Laboratory of Uruguay (LATU) is just a couple month's away from delivering the very last green and white laptops into the hands of every single Uruguayan primary school student.

As I described in an earlier article, the first two years of the OLPC deployment in Uruguay “have been characterized by implementation and incubation. The laptops have been deployed to schools, manuals have been created, tech savvy volunteer groups have been formed, wireless internet connections have been established, teachers have slowly learned how to implement the laptops into their curricula and classrooms, and, as Rezwan has covered previously, a community of open source programmers has developed educational applications for the laptops.”

Last week I visited Uruguay myself to witness how teachers and students were incorporating laptops and wi-fi connections (now in over 1,000 schools) into the classroom environment. My first gray blistery morning in Montevideo I joined a van full of professors and students from the Universidad de la República who were headed to Santa Lucía, a small town in the department of Canelones just an hour's drive from the capital. After a few accidental detours and several thermoses of mate tea, we pulled up to Santa Lucía's one and only primary school. Dozens of primary school students in white frocks were sitting on steps and tree trunks with their XO laptops, pecking away as if they were in a wi-fi café in Tokyo or New York City.

Santa Lucía's “Escuela 104″ (every school in Uruguay is given a number) teaches all of the town's young students in morning and afternoon shifts. That is, half of Santa Lucía's students come early in the morning and stay until lunch, and the other half arrive in the afternoon and stay until the early evening. When Pablo Flores, a professor of engineering at the Universidad de la República and a coordinator of Flor de Ceibo, asked the school's teachers if they had any problems or complaints regarding the XO laptops, one immediately responded, “the kids hang around here all day long. We can't get them to go home. Is there anything you can do to helps us?”

Pablo later told me that such reactions are typical during his frequent visits to schools around the country. However, while I found the comment to be entertaining, Pablo smiled softly with discouragement. On the way to Santa Lucías several of the volunteer students from the Universidad de la República shared their stories of teachers who felt threatened by the presence of the laptops in their classrooms. The younger teachers, they all agreed, tended to embrace the change and try to incorporate the laptops as much as possible into the classroom environment. But some of the older teachers felt that their position of authority in the classroom was threatened by the presence of the laptops and the power they gave the young students. As many university professors have discovered in recent years, laptops and internet connections in the classroom often lead to students chatting behind the professor's back. Or, as George Landow put it in Hypertext 3.0, “Technology always empowers someone. It empowers those who possess it, those who make use of it, and those who have access to it.”

I do not want to overstate the point. After all, this particular morning we were in the school's humble computer lab surrounded by eight or so teachers who all took time out of their busy schedules to learn more about the XO laptops and how they can make better use of them in the classroom. They were eager to learn and quick to make entertaining jokes about their frustrations with the new technologies. I imagined myself as a primacy school instructor - with over 20 years of teaching experience - having to learn new teaching techniques from volunteer university students who have never experienced the enormous challenge of keeping a classroom in order.

We were in Santa Lucía to give workshops explaining how to use the EduBlog blogging platform developed by a team of Uruguayan and American programmers. The XO laptops have been great at bringing information from the wider world to Uruguayan students, thanks to projects like Wikipedia and Conozco Uruguay, both of which come pre-installed on the machines. But, as Pablo explained to the gathered teachers, the laptops also permit Uruguayans to contribute content, stories, and knowledge to the vast repository of civilization that is the internet:

Each of the teachers created her own individual blog, and they then created a group blog for the entire school titled, appropriately enough, Escuela 104 de Santa Lucía.

One teacher, who registered under the username “sancac”, wrote:

Te cuento que soy una maestra de primer año de la escuela Nº 104 “Leticia Volpe” ubicada en la ciudad de Santa Lucía ,depto Canelones .Se encuentra ubicada en las calles R. Argentina, Tajes, Brasil y Tajes.Es una escuela de doble turno con un total de 700 niños aproximadamente. Estos son mis hijos……..

Another teacher, “ladelsanta” published a post with photos of nearby landmarks:

La Escuela Nº 104 se encuentra ubicada en la ciudad de Santa Lucía, a orillas del río del mismo nombre. En sus comienzos, fue escuela sólo para varones, con el correr del tiempo eso cambió y se transformó en escuela mixta como sigue siendo actualmente. Mi madre concurrió a esta escuela, que la llamaban la “escuela grande” porque ocupaba toda la manzana (actualmente compartida con el liceo Nº2).
Se destaca en nuestra localidad el primer hotel turístico del país, el hotel Biltmore

You can use Google's machine translation to read the rest of the teachers' entries.

The morning blogging workshop was facilitated by Pablo Flores and Mariel Cisneros Lopez, both professors from the Universidad de la República. But in the afternoon session, attended by over a dozen teachers, the university students took the lead, facilitating an outstanding workshop that got the teachers enthusiastic about the possibilities of blogging in the classroom. Flor de Ceibo will continue to organize expeditions to primary schools across the country in order to show teachers and students how they can share their stories, articles, and homework assignments online by using the EduBlog platform. Later in the year, with the financial support from their Rising Voices microgrant, they will organize a competition which awards prizes to students who publish the best entries about particular topics chosen by a committee of judges.

In the second part to this post, we will examine how EduBlog was created and how the CeibalJam movement is creating a local, dedicated community of open source volunteers who program for the XO laptop.

During the blogging training session

New Rising Voices grantee Public Fund “Mental Health” conducted their first blogging training session in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The training, called “I Want To Be Heard,” was organized for eight representatives of vulnerable groups , such as those with HIV/AIDS and mental health issues, and non-profits working with these groups.

During the training, mental health activists introduced the project and assessed the needs of the audience. They also presented the general concept of blogging, described the opportunities it provides, and talked about the goals of blogging and other similar technologies. The brainstorming that followed the discussion helped identify a few new ideas for joint projects. The most popular idea was establishing a virtual meeting club for people from the vulnerable groups.

Nadezhda Vladimirova, the project's leader, described the challenges and opportunities of the new blogging project in an interview.

Nadezhda thinks that the development of citizen media skills gives vulnerable groups new opportunities to defend their rights and advocate their needs. At the same time, though, she drew attention to several challenges that could potentially impact the project's success.

According to Nadezhda, the biggest challenge could be the attempts of Kazakh authorities to limit freedom of the Internet. She pointed out that a few days ago, the Kazakh government blocked access to the most popular Russian language blogging platform LifeJournal. The government explained its decision by stating that LifeJournal goes against a Kazakh court decision to block Web pages that criticize the Kazakh president.

Public Fund “Mental Health” training

Another challenge the project might face is the very low level of computer literacy among representatives of the vulnerable groups and an absence of technical facilities. Nadezhda elaborates:

Most of our clients just do not know what the Internet is about and what opportunities it gives. Many of our clients have never used a computer. As for now, we let our clients use the Internet in our office but it is not enough. In addition, once a week we organize classes on how to use a computer so that our clients can work on their own.

Nadezhda thinks that the project's success should be based on the following:

One of the vital steps for the development of the project is cooperation with other organizations. That is why we actively disseminate information about the project among our partners and involve them in developing new forms of cooperation. As of today, we can list a few nongovernmental organizations that work with us. First of all, we should mention Kazakh Union of People Living with HIV/AIDS, which unites nine HIV servicing organizations, and the nongovernmental organization “Doveriye+,” which serves vulnerable groups, such as people recently released from prison, injection drug users, etc. Cooperation with these organizations allowed us to organize the first training event and I hope it will help us accomplish our next step, which is to start Web blogs for the activists and clients of these organizations.

According to Nadezhda, two things are needed to increase interest in citizen media among vulnerable groups: understanding the specific needs of these people and explaining the basics of blogging and what opportunities it provides.

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