Rising Voices

Witness: Learning To Use Videos For Change

Rezwan — Sun, 13 May 2012 21:42:44 +0000

WITNESS, a human rights non-profit organization based in USA, empowers people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice. Founded in 1992 by musician Peter Gabriel, WITNESS is working to advance human rights through the use of video for change across many countries of the world.

The organization makes available useful training resources for human rights organizations and activists to help them do their work better. WITNESS’ core methodology is “video advocacy”, where the use of video is considered an integrated tool in human rights campaigns. It has trained individuals from more than 80 countries through hands-on workshops and provided video cameras to selected activists and community leaders. Its video sharing website The Hub empowers people to document and publicize unseen atrocities. It also operates an important preservation program through the WITNESS Media Archive.

WITNESS has launched its comprehensive training curriculum on human rights advocacy through video, which is available for download for free. It features 7 modules and 37 individual sessions ranging from 30 minutes to 6 hours long. These modules offer information about how to use videos for human rights advocacy activities, create and present credible stories to support their campaigns, the tricks of videomaking and much more. Included in each session are these downloadable PDFs:

Descriptions of session objectives, and what the participants will learn and experience;
PowerPoint slide decks, which are embedded so you can see the key points and structure of the session.
Facilitator notes which highlight the structure of the session; key points, details on the resources and case studies, and suggested exercises to complete during the session.
Participant notes help guide participants and provide essential information to support the session.
Handouts are incorporated in the session, and also in a workbook for participants.

Screenshot of Video for Change Curriculum

With this curriculum WITNESS seeks to expand the reach of its training programs to large and more diverse group of people, organizations, and networks online and offline. You can see a presentation on the WITNESS Curriculum.

Speak Out Tunisia: Training Citizen Journalists For A Free And Fair Press

Rezwan — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:42:44 +0000

Remember Anne Medley, a photojournalist and videographer based in the United States, who taught multimedia journalism to empower Congolese students?

She also helped out Le PaCTE Tunisien (Pacte des Compétences Tunisiennes Engagées), a Tunisian association to start the Speak Out Tunisia, a citizen journalism training project. After the Tunisian revolution Le PaCTE worked to bring together Tunisians and its supporters to help build a better Tunisia.

In an interview to the NewsMeBack blog Khalil Ghorbal, a Telecommunications engineer and co-founder of the Tunisian PaCTE, presents ‘Speak Out Tunisia':

Speak Out Tunisia is a citizen journalism training project that aims to teach a diverse group of Tunisian citizens about digital media and online journalism. After 23 years of oppression without a free press under Dictator Ben Ali, Speak Out Tunisia seeks to return the power of a free and fair press to the Tunisian people.

Read the interview for more info.

Anne Medley taught the beginners group of citizen journalists in the southern town of Kebili in March. The participants were chosen from 90 applicants. Anne writes in Speak Out Tunisia blog:

On March 19, the Speak Out Tunisia citizen journalism training session for beginners began in Kebili. Since then, my students have impressed me daily with their questions about journalism ethics, issues of bias in the Tunisian press and photojournalism skills.

This is their forum to post their photos, videos and writings. Check them out often!

Click on the image to play video

The second phase of training with the advanced students took place in Tunis. Here in Kickstarter site this update was posted:

The students spent two weeks shooting photo and video stories, learning about journalism ethics, and producing final video projects. The PaCTE team ended the Speak Out Tunisia project on Saturday, April 21 with a closing conference in Tunis on citizen journalism featuring renowned journalists and citizen journalism experts from France and Tunisia.

Students from both the beginner and advanced sessions continue to post their work to www.speakoutunisia.com, so please check often to see their latest photo and video reports.

This video featuring Anne Medley talks about the project.

India: Awaaz.De - Giving Voice To Marginal And Disadvantaged Communities

Rezwan — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:32:57 +0000

In countries like India the internet penetration is low, especially in marginalized communities. It is still a long way for the rural poor to afford proper infrastructure and gain access to the internet. Organizations struggle to reach to these communities isolated geographically, and distanced by local languages. These people usually have low rate of literacy and have limited experience with information technology. However the mobile penetration is high and can be a deal breaker in ICT based development efforts.

Awaaz.de is an innovative software program (voice-XML based Interactive Voice Response system) that allows development organizations to connect with these poor, rural and marginalized communities by providing on-demand, many-to-many information access through mobile phones. People can access Awaaz.De applications by dialing regular phone numbers to work with voice contents through automated voice interfaces. When a farmer calls in, he/she hears audio prompts and is asked to enter a number from the keypad or say a word in order to navigate. Voice applications overcome the language barrier, offering services in local languages and overcome literacy constraints.

Awaaz.De was founded by Neil Patel and Tapan Parikh two years ago. Their first effort was Avaaj Otalo, an open-source, voice-based platform for Gujarati farmers. According to Mobile Active's case study:

Avaaj Otalo provides three modes of functionality. When farmers call in, they can either listen to archives of DSC's weekly radio boradcast, listen to announcements from DSC staff put up specifically for Avaaj Otalo, or participate in the question-answer forum. The archive and announcements are offered for browsing.

According to Center Of Microfinance blog “the project has the potential to go much beyond the purview of agriculture and have positive effects on farmers’ health status as they switch to pesticides which pose lesser health risks”.

Image courtesy AngelList

And rightly so Awaaz.de is also using its voice message board and serving a number of development organization clients across 6 states in India to conduct survey, campaign and other services for the. The services include phone surveys, broadcast messages to wide or targeted audiences, and track usage and reach clients with comprehensive reporting for them. All software are open source and offered as an end-to-end hosted service. Tapan Parikh explains in Ushahidi blog

A web-based dashboard is used by community moderators to curate and categorize user submissions, facilitate sharing of knowledge and disseminate targeted information, while creating a home-grown database of users and local-language voice content. A more detailed description of how Awaaz.De works can be found here.

Here is a video featuring Neil Patel, who is explaining what Awaaz.de does.

Please follow Awaaz.de on Twitter and Facebook.

Featured Guide: Data Journalism Handbook - A New Approach To Storytelling

Rezwan — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:01:37 +0000

“Data journalism is obtaining, reporting on, curating and publishing data in the public interest.” - Jonathan Stray, journalist and computer scientist.

Last November at a 48 hour workshop at Mozilla Festival in London, a number of journalists and developers started work on the first Data Journalism Handbook. The main focus of the effort was to have a comprehensive step-by-step guide to data journalism as there are a lot of useful resources on the web, but they are not organized in one place. The Data Journalism Handbook was coordinated by the European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Click on the image to watch a slideshow.

The initial effort subsequently transformed into an international, collaborative effort involving many of data journalism's leading advocates and best practitioners - including from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, the Chicago Tribune, Deutsche Welle, the Guardian, the Financial Times, Helsingin Sanomat, La Nacion, the New York Times, ProPublica, the Washington Post, the Texas Tribune, Verdens Gang, Wales Online, Zeit Online and many others.

Image courtesy Online Journalism Blog

The Handbook has been formally launched on 28th of April, 2012 at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. The first version of the Data Journalism Handbook is now available for download at datajournalismhandbook.org under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License. There will also be a printed and e-book version published by O’Reilly Media.

The handbook explains “What Is Data Journalism?“, “Why Journalists Should Use Data” and “Why Is Data Journalism Important?“among other things. It features case studies and tells how to mine data, analyze it and deliver it via a story.

Rising Voices grantee Friends of Januária from Brazil was featured in the case studies section of the handbook. It shows how ordinary people can use data for citizen journalism:

You don’t need to be in a large newsroom with a lot of specialists to use data in your articles. After twelve workshops, Soraia and Alysson, neither of whom have a background in journalism, were able to work on data powered stories and write interesting pieces about their local situation. In addition, their articles show that data itself can be useful even on a small scale. In other words, that there is also valuable information in small datasets and tables — not only in huge databases.

Data-driven journalism is a journalistic process based on analyzing and filtering with open source tools large data sets, which are freely available online. The goal of this process is to tell journalistic stories based on the data. This connection between data and story tries to bridge the gap between developments that are relevant and to tell a story that is verifiable, trustworthy, relevant and easy to remember.

Data Journalism is a new phenomenon and there is a growing list of examples how it can be applied. Guardian has an extensive list of data stories and of course the release by whistle-blower organization WikiLeaks of huge data set of the Afghan War Diary.

This website is dedicated to providing anyone interested in getting started with data driven journalism with a collection of learning resources, including relevant events, tools, tutorials, interviews and case studies. Also follow its Facebook and Twitter pages for regular updates.

Bangladesh: Citizen's Voice, A Citizen Watchdog for Public Services

Rezwan — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:25:29 +0000

(This is a guest post by Salman Latif, crossposted from Global Voices Online. This post is part of our 7 Billion Actions series commissioned by the UNFPA)

As internet connectivity grows in developing nations, technology is coming to play vital roles in shaping the trends of social activism and awareness. Although there is still limited access to internet in countries like Bangladesh, it is very promising to witness projects that are beginning to use ICT to address social issues.

Citizen’s Voice (Nagorikkontho.org) is one such project which has been launched by Population Services and Training Center (PSTC) to empower Bangladeshi public by having their voices heard, especially regarding feedback on public services. The platform supports both Bangla and English language to make it versatile for all the users and all the technology platforms (mobile texting sill do not support Bangla font).

Bangladeshi government agencies have recently defined service deliverables in their Citizens Charter. Documenting feedback about these services is important for their quality to be assessed.

Citizens Voice - www.nagorikkontho.org/

Citizen’s Voice believe that this would help enhance the standard of these services and bridge the common man to the public authorities:

“If common people become aware of what are their inalienable rights stated in the Citizen Charter, they can understand their needs and performance of the public service agencies. Therefore, they can monitor their deserved services and raise their voice to the civil societies and respective public authorities. This monitoring will further improve their civic facilities and augment their living status.”

A stack of bricks in a parking space that shouldn't be there. From Citizen's Voice.

The portal has been built based on Ushahidi platform and it contains different reports which cite the irregularities by government institutions, and has emerged as a watchdog for such irregularities, and media outlets can use it to locate such issues. One example is a report about Panchagah Women’s College. The college was charging students a fee for entrance forms more than double as high as was sanctioned by the government.

After Citizen’s Voice published the report, the media took notice, and college authorities were ordered by the board of education to revise their fees. This is one example of how something as apparently simple as a digital report published on a website can actually be significant enough to make a practical impact on ground. To facilitate access to a common man, reports can be submitted via sms, email or through a web form.

The header on the site lists a number of questions, asking about the availability of common services - such as access to health facilities, free education, and so forth. ‘If not, please send a report,’ it says. Reports can also be submitted in the form of a video, photo or a blog post. One video listed on the website by maaDiyan on YouTube shows a busride on “the busiest highway of Bangladesh” between Dhaka and Bandarban, and how drivers skirt traffic rules to get ahead faster.

We were taking the bus back to Dhaka from Bandarban. I think it was on 10 Sep 2011. I was wondering if there were any changes to how people drive on highways in Bangladesh, after so much was going on about road safety. I got my answer. These drivers are simply crazy. There were enough traffic signs on the road, but I have a suspicion that these bus drivers think those are there for decorative purpose only.

In these ways, Citizens’ Voice offers a democratic space for interaction between service recipients and providers through technology.

Quechua: Words of Encouragement from the Haquira Mayor

Eddie Avila — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:51:09 +0000

When Irma Alvarez Ccoscco, coordinator of the new Rising Voices grantee project Llaqtaypa Riymaynin (Voices of my Community) returned to her hometown of Haquira, Peru, she received an overwhelming display of support from the town's residents and local authorities. She was temporarily back home visiting from Lima and took the opportunity to inform the community that her project was recently selected as a new grantee project of Rising Voices. The project seeks to work with migrants from Haquira now living in the capital by encouraging them to maintain their native language of Quechua by producing audio podcasts about their culture and their community.

In the project blog, Irma describes this gathering of town residents[es] that was convened through the use of SMS messages. After some brief words describing the project to those assembled and how the initiative will help tell the story of Haquira in the Quechua language, they invited the town's mayor Rolando Curiyumay to some “hakitu” (toasted and ground wheat). Irma wrote, “when one finds oneself in another land, the sense of family and the need to share what one has emerges.” Following this fellowship, Curiyumay said some brief poetic words and provided some pieces of advice for the Irma and the project:

T’ikachakuna iskayniykichik kaypi tiyasqankichik, ñuqapas kusisqa kachkani qamkunawan sullkay Elverwanpas kay hatun llaqtapi. Cielupi hina wasikunapas altumanta qhawayuna kasqa kuruchakunahina pampapi, purichkan karrukunapas, chayta qhawarini. Chayqa, qamkuna sumaqta, aynata parlariwaqchik huñunakuspa, may llaqtakunapipas kachkan paysanunchikkuna haquiriñukuna… chayqa paykunawan sumaqta rimayanakuspam imachatapas ruwawaqchis llaqtanchispaq, chaymanhina ñuqapas qamkunawan aswan masta ruwasway llaqtanchik hatunyananpaq.

Little flowers, the two of you have lived here, and I am also very pleased to see you and my younger brother Elver here in the town. From the houses, as high as the sky, one can see the many cars on the ground as if they were small insects. You, who have gathered here, should keep in touch with us, and remember that our fellow residents of Haquira are spread out in many different places … is in that manner that you can meet with them and any project should have communication with our people, and I, together with you, let's do more so that our people can continue to grow.

Aymar Ccopacatty (Qamasa project) Elver Villalobos, Rolando Curitumay (Haquira Mayor) y Raquel Alvarez. Photo by Irma Alvarez

Ségou Villages: Boukary Konaté Is A Finalist At BOBs

Thalia Rahme — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:23:09 +0000

Boukary Konaté is a translator for Global Voices in French and also a Rising Voices grantee representing the Ségou Villages Connection.

This year he has another feather on the cap. Boukary has been listed among the finalists in the Best of Blogs the BOBs, an annual event held by the Deutsche Welle Media Group to award blog and bloggers who have in a way or another marked their societies, communities and contributed to promoting freedom of expression.

Boukary is competing under the category “Education and Culture” for his own blog Fasokan in both French and Bambara languages.

Fasokan in Mali promotes local languages and cultures on his bilingual, personal blog. He introduced village people to the Internet and basic search on the Web during an educational cruise on river Niger in Mali.

Boukary Konaté with Global Voices business card. Image by workshop.segou

On the Intro of his blog, Boukary writes:

La langue ne se développe pas elle-même, ce sont ses locuteurs qui la travaille. Le peu que je peux faire pour le développement et la promotion des langues africaines, je le fais pour que nos langues traversent les rivières et les fleuves et prennent place parmi les autres langues dans le vestibule de partage d’information et de savoir, qui est Internet. Fasokan, Site en langues nationale Bambara, Mali

A Language don't develop from themselves, its speakers that work on it. The little I can do for the development and the promotion of African languages, I do it, so that our languages cross rivers and take a place among other languages in the hallway of knowledge and information exchange and sharing which is the Internet. Fasokan, a website in national language, Bambara, Mali

You can encourage Boukary by voting for his blog. The voting has started and continues till May 1st.

All you have to do is go the BoB's website, choose the “Education and Culture” category, select Fasokan as a site and then vote.

All the winners will be announced on the BOBs’ website on May 2.

Print Screen from the BoB's website

Boukary, who also tweets under the same name of Fasokan, writes:

@Fasokan (Boukary Konate): The vote continues, vote here for Fasokan.

Paraguay: Citizen Media Workshops with Aché Communities

Eddie Avila — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:57:47 +0000

The first actitivies for the 2012 class of Rising Voices grantee projects are soon to be underway. In Paraguay, the project Ache djawu/palabra Aché (The Aché Word) has announced on their project blog [es] that its first workshops are scheduled for April 28 [es].

The purpose of the project is to identify several young people from each of the six Aché communities to take part in intensive skills-building workshops in the use of blogs, digital photography and video, as well as social networking, as a way to preserve and promote their language and culture. Tamara Migelson, who is accompanying these communities in these workshops writes about the potential to benefit their communities:

De esta manera se planteó una “urgencia” histórica, ya que tras cuarenta años de adaptación compulsiva a los modos de vivir occidentales, los ancianos y ancianas que vivieron la experiencia de la cultura plena en el monte y que hablan la lengua Aché “original” tienen hoy más de sesenta años y pueden testimoniar sus vidas, sus formas de significar y su cultura. Surgió la necesidad imperiosa de recoger su legado en peligro y unir estos relatos en materiales impresos y audiovisuales para fortalecer la lengua y la cultura Aché.

In this manner, an “urgent” history arose, because after forty years of compulsive adaptation to the Western way of living by the elderly members of the communities who lived these cultural experiences firsthand in the bush. These residents, who are sixty years and older, also speak the “original” Aché language and can provide life testimonies, and what their culture means. The need arose to recover the legacy of this culture at risk and pull together these stories in written and audio-visual materials to stregthen the Aché language and culture.

Beginning on April 28, this three-day workshop will bring together a representative from six different Aché communities, as well as one invited leader to take part in these citizen media activities. The participants will be:

Ricardo Mbekrorongi of Kuetuvy, Canindeyú Department.
Marciano Chevugi of Chupa Pou, Canindeyú Department.
Demecio Urugi of Arroyo Bandera, Canindeyú Department.
Santiago Urugi of Ypetimí, Caazapá Department.
Franciso Kandegi of Puerto Barra, Alto Paraná Department.
Raquel Eiragi of Cerro Morotí, Caaguazú Department.
Margarita Mbywangi Kuetuvy leader, Canindeyú Department.

The workshops will take place in the capital city of Asunción and will introduce the participants to one another, and demonstrate how use citizen media to responsibly construct these stories so that they can become spokespersons for their individual communities. Specific topics will focus on the creation of blogs, digital storytelling, and the use and editing of photographs.

CGNet Swara: Enabling Tribals of Chhattisgarh To Tell Their Stories

Rezwan — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 21:52:38 +0000

CGNet Swara is a mobile-based news service which enables the tribals of Chhattisgarh to tell their version of stories, in their language. It is an initiative of former BBC journalist & Knight International Journalism Fellow Shubranshu Choudhury, which gives daily news snippets of a region that is typically ignored by the mainstream media.

In Chhattisgarh less than 1% of the population has internet access and many people are illiterate. So only logical measure was deploying a technology which is already available - mobile phones. CGNet Swara has a voice-based portal, based on Audiowiki software developed by MIT, which is freely accessible via mobile phone and it caters both the citizen journalists and listeners.

Training Camp. Image courtesy CGNet Swara

Here is how the portal works - citizen journalists can call a phone number (+91 8041137280), press 1, and record a news onto the system. Once a message has been recorded, a dedicated team of professionals who access the system using a Web-based interface, review and verify the report. Approved reports are then made available for playback over the phone and simultaneously can be accessed on the CGNet Swara website. Listeners can call the same number, press 2, and hear the last three items of the moderators' choice, that has been published in the portal.

The Swara System. Image Courtesy CGNet Swara

CGNet Swara moderators use a Google SMS channel to send out an SMS after each news report is published. Selected stories are sent out to the CGNet mailing list, posted in their blog and shared in their Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts.

According to Indian Tribal Blog:

There are no tribal journalists in the mainstream media in Chhattisgarh. The number of journalists who speak any of the tribal languages are very few. The major media in the state are owned by people with interests in coal, power and steel. That shapes how they report the public hearings that are frequently held on locating projects in a particular area. “The owner, writer, reader — they are all on the same side of this war.” Radio is the ideal medium for a state with a population scattered across a forested interior, but All India Radio has no news service in a tribal language.

How do you democratise journalism? By getting people to give their own news, even if the only language they speak is Gondi or Kuruk.

You can listen to an interview an interview with Subranshu Chowdhury on CGNet Swara in Global Voices' Technology For Transparency Network Page. Also read the case study by Mobile active here. Below is a short animated film describing how CGNet Swara is impacting people:

Languages: The Digital Sounds of Bésiro (Chiquitano)

Eddie Avila — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:47:57 +0000

The Bolivian Constitution proudly recognizes 36 indigenous languages as official languages of the State. Three of these languages, Quechua, Aymara, and Guaraní are the most widely known because of the higher number of speakers and because they are also spoken in neighboring countries. Finding resources and available content in the other 33 languages is often a challenge for these communities.

A project taking place in the Department of Santa Cruz seeks to help address this issue by using digital citizen media to begin to produce their own online content with the hopes that it will encourage more people to preserve and revitalize their language.

At the Gabriel René Moreno Autonomous University [es] Humanities and Educational Science Department in the city of Santa Cruz, a group of young linguists led by Ignacio Tomicha Chuve, has started a project called Monkox Bésiro as a way to put the Bésiro (Chiquitano) language on the digital map. This language is spoken the Chiquitano people in several provinces in the Santa Cruz and Bení departments with estimates that between 20,000-60,000 speakers still remain.

In addition to opening up a Twitter account (@MonkoxBesiro) and Facebook Page, the project is actively using SoundCloud to upload audio clips recorded amongst themselves or during field visits to their home communities, such as San Antonio de Lomerio.

For example, here is a short bilingual language lesson with a greeting in Bésiro and proper pronunciation of the consonant sounds:

A traditional song sung in Bésiro:

and the “Our Father” prayer in Bésiro: