FOKO Madagascar

After months studying for their exams and weeks waiting for the results (and they were all successful!), Foko bloggers resumed their Citizen Media duties by posting regurlarly on their blogs. Despite the problems of connexion, green (from Antsirabe), orange (from Majunga), yellow (from Tananarive) and blue (from Tamatave) updates appear daily on the RSS feeds from Foko Universe on Netvibes. 

Randy Donné and ESSVA students bring news from Vakinankaratra region and have helped in the publication of FOKO’s first full page on a national newspaper, Hebdo de Madagascar. 

Lomelle, Rondro, Antsa and Diana the talented students from the School of Journalism in Majunga are also intensively taking part in bringing news on the web. While interning this fall at two great Malagasy publications and newspapers in Tananarive, they use their blogs to share stories and opinions on the latest trend or the visit of a famous artist. Lomelle’s pictures from Admiral T show at Antsahamanitra this November.

After a year of promoting Citizen Media all around the island alone, activist coordinator Stéphane hard work was celebrated during E-bit 12 event at Palais des Sports et de la Culture at Mahamasina. Foko team had only 12 days to gather the most bloggers possible to handle 15000 visitors from 6 to 17 and despite the logistical challenges, E-bit 12 was a huge success in many levels.

http://www.foko-madagascar.org/2008/10/19/foko-at-ebit/

http://www.foko-madagascar.org/2008/10/21/foko-hosting-youth-day-at-e-bit-madagascar-part-2-working-for-free-and-professionally-despite-the-obstacles/

http://www.foko-madagascar.org/2008/10/24/foko-hosting-youth-day-at-e-bit-madagascar-part-3-teaching-web-20-and-open-source-to-malagasy-students/

All Foko

Bloggers managing workshops on their own

Diana, Lomelle, Koloina and Rondro took the initiative to have monthly Foko meeting on their own and are planning to teach blogging to new members. During October 17th Ebit 12 when the coordinators were submerged, all the bloggers took charge of the initiation sessions by using improvisations. ESSVA students, who were the newest additions at Foko, helped open dizains of e-mail accounts and blogs (list will be published soon) despite the slow connexion and them been quickly outnumbered by the attendees.

Michel and Solofo, the ESSVA students sharing, teaching, knowing what they do

Bloggers sharing their knowledge and showcasing their skills

Learning social activism from Diana during a Barcamp, Editing videos and pictures from Solofo and David at Malagasy biggest ICT event; Improving English discussing with ICE each saturday; Want to know more on 3D modelling? check Nhani’s blog; Meggha is planning to blog on entrepreneurship; Moma and Patrick will join forces to talk more about their passion : Tourism in Madagascar;…;From the blogging perspective, the members seem to masterize any topic and when it comes to sharingthey never refuse even on public radio shows!

Koloina during MBS radio pre-Ebit 12 show

Bloggers texting, posting comments, calling bloggers

Antsirabe, Majunga, Antananarivo and Tamatave are very well represented at Foko. After Barcamp and the very fun lunch at Oktoberfest in Mahamasina (Antananarivo’s stadium and the same site as the Palais des Sports et de la Culture) they had on the same day, they all became close friends and were very happy to meet again 2 weeks later at the same spot but this time they took the stage. Stéphane, who is usually coordinating communication when not travelling or training bloggers, just need to contact few bloggers who will pass the news by text messaging to each others. Joan who was officially the “spammer” at Foko Blogs is replaced by Tahina, Patrick, Lomelle, Ariniaina…

Please post comments on their latest updates :

Bisikilety Minday Raha by Zouboon (in Malagasy)

Madagascar : Politique et Média by RaslMetal (in French)

Go for learning and practicing English by Ariniaina

Foko bloggers were the real authors of the first Barcamp in Madagascar’s success. The coordinators wanted the tech communities to notice the existence of Foko network and mostly the members interests in other fields related to Citizen Media. In fact, very few associations, journalists and professionals knew about Foko-Madagascar and our outreach project the Foko Blog Club before this October 4th. Of course the event was wide open to anyone to participate and we only took the reporting task as an honour but not as a duty at all. Each blogger had the opportunity to interview, take videos and liveblog thanks to Moov, Malagasy first internet provider, free connexion. It is also a great opportunity to get more sponsors, volunteers or help from organisms. Foko bloggers presentations from Diana and Patricia were very applauded because of their spontaneity and of course hard work. Rondro and Lomelle from Majunga joined by Theo and Patrick from Tamatave were the proud representants of Foko network in the provinces. They proved to be more than interested to Open Source projects when asking very professional questions during the presentations.

Lomelle liveblogging and twitting with excellence on FBC’s new laptop the very useful Asus eepc

Creating partnerships was also one of our goals during this event and when associations from the provinces of Madagascar knew about Foko’s intentions to expand, they graciously offered their technical support. In exchange, ICE, the english-speaking group in Antananarivo, will see more Open Source developers at their weekly meetings to improve their English! Finally it was a surprise for us to see the creators of the biggest tech event in Madagascar participating at the discussions and inviting all the attendees to help them for Youth Day were 15000 students from all schools will be visiting on October 17th. Of course carefully we are going to be using the acronym : Open and Free Communities when refering to the associations involved this project in order to keep the “Barcamp” spirit.

Nambina (C3LF- Open Source developers community) helping Diana on her presentation with OpenOffice

So on October 17th, all Foko from Antsirabe to Tamatave will be again in Antananarivo sharing their Citizen Media experiences and giving blogging tips ! But for us at Foko, it will be another memorable day when we don’t have to intensively text each other …

By Friday, we hope you will enjoy posting comments at Vakinankaratra region new groups (Antsirabe+Ambatolampy) and ICE :

FBC 12 from ICE

http://sixthman.wordpress.com

http://gasykool.wordpress.com

http://nhani.wordpress.com

http://momadago.wordpress.com

http://gigantus.wordpress.com

http://ariniaina.wordpress.com

http://andrydago.wordpress.com

http://davidrichman.wordpress.com

http://ravoz.wordpress.com

http://thefinalandlastkill.wordpress.com

http://faratiana.wordpress.com

http://moonlightgirl.wordpress.com

http://dagome.wordpress.com

FBC 13 from Vakinankaratra

http://lovakely.wordpress.com

http://essvacomm.wordpress.com

http://imahaka.wordpress.com

http://tahinasoa.wordpress.com

http://rasmetal.wordpress.com

http://farakel.wordpress.com

http://yrha.wordpress.com

new bloggers from Antsirabe

Foko team is running FBC in 3 different towns of Madagascar and is planning to add 3 more groups to the network. We’ve already mentioned about the challenges when coordinating workshops and also the difficulties with managing the groups with the absence of trainers or coordinators in place. Give more responsabilities and autonomy to the leader bloggers who are more aware of the internal difficulties and have inspired their group with their individual achievements.

For example, Diana’s and Avylavitra’s activism have helped promote Foko in a global scale but after a year of activity (FBC 12 just took place last Sunday, September 21st) we need to emphasize more on the “Foko” aspects  and develop collective activities such as participation to international contests in team or address to special request from the groups (need of more connection hours to learn a particular tool for example). CPO, BUEC or ICE groups are already very well organized associations with president, secretary general and treasurers. Bloggers from the Class of ‘08 with their experiences and skills will be leading this new strategy and of course to motivate them we will keep on looking for more opportunities.Patricia, the president of UN Club in Antananarivo - CPO - was the Rising Voices representant along with Rahool from the Dhaka Neighborhood Diaries in Brussels for the Interdependance Day Conference earlier this month.We hope that more young bloggers from the Rising Voices could attend this kind of events and report back.

Citizen Media introduction at Lycée Jules Ferry on Sept.17th 2008

When CPO associations were “discovered” by Hery, our newest addition, the English Club of Antananarivo was noticed by Joan when she was surfing “Pazzapa” on the internet (Pazzapa is the Malagasy American Idol). Their collective blog was so well-written on so many different topics that they were the best candidates for September’s workshops. In less than 3 days and a very friendly mails exchanging, we sealed the partnership and met the group for the first time the day before FBC 12!

ICE English Club first meeting on Avenue de l’Indépendance on Sept.20th 2008

Lova’s encounter with Jaona from Antsirabe where he works with 21 associations of marginalized youths was also very interesting. They met in Mexico during ‘08 AIDS Conference. Since Lova is based in Indiana and working actively in promoting the blogs, raising funds and translating posts, it was his first try at ” auditioning” a future FBC group. He explained the Citizen Media project so well that Jaona was very impatient to meet Stéphane in Madagascar in order to schedule the Antsirabe workshops.

Youth associations in Antsirabe getting ready next FBC workshop

After 10 months of planting blogs, Foko-Madagascar first project met successes in different ways, three languages and in a very short period of time. We launched this outreach with well defined goals, supposedly, we had all figured out from the first workshop (we even used to make GANTT charts) to the launch of our next project (we are dreaming about building a huge cybercafé painted in green) but of course we expected to meet deceptions, make millions mistakes and start fights over a key-decision to take….all this to spice things up. Most of the updates on the Rising Voices blog are emphasizing on the results but the more “good news” we published, the harder our team had to work backstage and improvise.

Foko, a pioneer for Citizen Media in Madagascar

With a School of Journalism as part of our Blog Club and more and more excellent stories on topics rarely published on newspapers, you would think that Foko has touched the heart of Malagasy readers (internet and newspapers). But journalism is still a very well-guarded citadel in Madagascar and many are still asking our coordinators and members about their “motivations” in giving away for (free) such important informations and hard work. Cyclone Yvan coverage and Baby Kamba project were two very interesting examples of journalists and webmasters relaying without aknowledging Avylavitra , Diana nor Foko’s in general interventions. Videos of Ikopa river filmed with his own mini-camera and put on Youtube were found on a popular Malagasy website, the webmaster was raising funds for the victims but “forgot” to give credits to Avylavitra. After Baby Kamba’s second operation, after the stressing hours, Diana was convocked at a press conference. This very talented young journalist and activist had the chance to be interviewed on her participation and how her blogging was decisive for Baby Kamba’s future. But her blog’s adress was never mentioned ….

• Our first move was to integrate more journalists on our side and each time we don’t hesitate to share our experiences and show them the values of Citizen Media and what it could bring to developing countries and Madagascar particularly. Randy Donné is well-known for his articles on Lexpress de Madagascar and today on Les Nouvelles and was one of Diana’s supporters. He is now teaming with Foko to train his students at ICM Antsirabe where he is teaching journalism classes to Citizen media and open new blogs from the Vakinankaratra region. The new workshops will integrate tutorials on licencing (Creative Commons), commenting and social networking.

Foko, showing a new approach to ICT in Madagascar

3 out of 5 members have very basic knowledges of computing and internet but all of them have their personal cellphones and are experts at the Art of phone texting. Their first motivation to join the FBC was to learn more from the new technology and to develop skills with new media (videos and poscasts are total hits). FBC seems to be the link between the popular but limited use of internet for corresponding and chatting only and the dynamique but very selective community of developers. With a 3-step workshop format we tried to teach blogging, photography and video+podcast taking and encourage the bloggers to transfer their knowledge to their communities. But most of the time and not only because of the low connection and the costs, coordinators support are required. Video editing followed by the loading, more tutoring on Wordpress and tips on online behavior are exchanged outside of the workshops hours. Hery and Stéphane noticed that the young bloggers needed more attention and “protection” from unwelcomed sollicitators on internet.

• More “special” workshops are in preparation so our bloggers can answer to the community who is criticizing us on our “foolish” use of technology. We will produce breathtaking webdesign and professional video and audio contents like the ones Patricia and Nombana made to win international contests.

Foko, facing organisational and logistical challenges

It was after our expansion in Tamatave and soon after Lindsay’s departure from Majunga that we realized we had to monitor than managing our network (we are very proud of this expression). Contacts were made with the bloggers twice a month with alternative ways to communicate (Skype, phone calls, chats). We had the opportunity to get guest bloggers and already trained members , Karenichia and her friends in Tananarive for example, to take over the workshop when the coordinators where travelling in the provinces. Coordinating and scheduling these meetings are still very difficult with most of the members still studying and having a part-time job during their free-time. The blog carnival participation for August 31st has a question mark on our calendar since we didn’t hear from the members yet but we never know… In addition, we still have to solve our biggest problems of connectivity and finding cheaper and efficient ways to transfer pictures and videos online. Negociations are in progress with the cybercafés, sponsorship projects are in preparation and ideas of starting our own cybercafé.

But Foko team have came to the realizations that our decisions concern more the members than the organization itself and it has become an urgence to include them in the process and even giving them more responsabilities. All of them expressed their support to Foko in very touching ways and we have complete trust in them as they are the ones who are becoming the leaders of their communities : UN Club groups are the head students of their high-schools already used to activism and English Club in Tamatave students are involved in social activities.  And finally our choice to pursue our expansion to other regions  has been collectivelly discussed and will integrate the lessons we’ve learned from the previous workshops : passion, autonomy and knowledge transfer.

Since October 2007, when we started the Foko Blog Club project, our constant preoccupation was to find a sustainable way to finance our workshops. The Rising Voices grant came at the right moment (after our 3rd workshop) and helped us extend our activities in the regions where there are less coverage from the media. We bought digital cameras and distributed it right away to the groups to publish videos, podcasts and furnish their blogs with pictures.Our mini-blogging contest back in April 2008 proved that competition may be very motivational. Even if Karenichia was the one who won the digital camera, we greeted all of the participants free hours of connexion to help them update their blog outside the workshops. Of course their heavy schedule (since most of the members are students at universities) and, again, the high costs at cybercafes were the obstacles for them to blog regularly.

Mrs Annelie Rozenboom the offices of the Mada English Journal

The offer from Mrs Annellie Rozenboom to publish our bloggers’ articles and instauring a special FOKO column brought intensive and very creative writing from every corner of the island. The Madagascar English Journal is a weekly publication distributed to high-schools to promote the use of English (which is now Madagascar’s 3rd official language with French and Malagasy). They quickly recognized the versatily of the likes of Rondro or Ledheada (Lists of selected articles here) and we are now frequently asked to submit more on culture and society in exchange of a small stipend converted in connexion hours (again to keep the focus on online presence). This interest in their work from the great staff at Mada Journal (a publication sponsored by Exxon Mobile and supported by the US embassy*), their advices to help write in a more journalistic  way (integrate few lines of interviews, illustrate with pictures,…)  and the opportunity to be read by thousands were the reasons behind these last weeks’ flow of blogging.

Already 7 bloggers contributed to the free  Journal distributed to Madagascar’s high-schools

From all the FOKO Blogggers,

Thank you for reading our articles

We still have little problems commenting and responding to feedbacks which was very early noticed and oftenly criticized by the blogosphere. We are looking for ways to solve the problems of low speed connectivity and give more time to our bloggers to take part in the many debates their articles have initiated.

(*thanks to Mrs Rozenboom for the correction)

Read the rest of this entry »

Many of you know Foko by the works of talented citizen journalists Patrick, Karenichia, Ledheada or Patricia. From their corner of Madagascar, each one of them are building Foko’s citizen media very strong network  , the FBC, with little resources but a lot of energy and of course their sunning skills (trilinguism, activism, confidence,etc.). There will be no powerful and full of promises communities without this one Foko. He is  tirelessly supporting - by travelling and networking - and training  - with his little knowledge (he only started to blog in October 2007) the talented bloggers all around the country. In less than a year, he became very close to each bloggers and always find innovative solutions for Foko’s problems, even if sometimes it requires strong manners but a lot of generosity! Monsieur Stéphane (this is how they call him from Majunga to Tamatave) is reporting for Rising Voices :

Play video : Hello World from Stéphane Ramananarivo

The CPO (Club for UN) kids are very fond of their blogging workshops. At first they had difficulties using Wordpress because the students only knew about Skyblog.com which is a very popular blogging plateform. They appreciated the commenting sessions and when we started the mini blogging contest we invited them to write down their articles to not waste their precious connection. Lindsay’s filming lessons were very useful but we discovered that it was still risky to interview people randomly on the streets or even take pictures of events. We’re now becoming a serious actor at the UNIC (UN Informational Center) and the director is always encouraging new members to take interest in our sessions, especially since Patricia’s video was featured on a Youth contest for World Population Day.

Last FBC on July 22nd 2008 in Tamatave

please read and post comments on our blogs

We had workshops through April to July in Tamatave, the economical capitale of Madagascar which is 360km from Antananarivo, 6 hours road trip. This town is where the “Ambatovy Project” had settle the biggest Cobalt and Nickel mining exploitations in the world. We approached workers from the big companies in Tamatave to share their experiences of the changes that had been made in the regions and their personal lives. A 5 hours long power outtage made us miss the rendez-vous but we invited the 20 of them to come back. We had the opportunity, shortly after, to meet students from the University of Tamatave. The English Club is a group of 50 and quickly started to use blogging to promote their association’s social activities in the Barikadimy’s popular neighborhood.

on board of a Taxi Brousse to Tamatave

500 km and 10 hours by car from Antananarivo, the future of Malagasy Journalism is in the hands of the  very energetic Lomelle, Zouboon, Rondro and their director Mr Vita. Unfortunately they are  located in the outskirts of the city but this doesn’t keep most of the students in making great efforts to actively report on the latest news from the very lively Majunga. The school’s success relies on their students abilities to lead rigorous investigations like we saw in Diana’s professional coverage of Kamba. We learned that it took her hours to convince Georgine to allow her to take pictures from her Nokia mobile phone !! If youth activism made Majunga known worldwide, the other motivation to start workshops in Madagascar provinces was to promote our culture and share more about our traditions. Hkambora and Rondro are doing a tremedious work relating stories from tribes like the Antekaran or the importance of rituals like circumcision and famadihana.

with Mr Vita from the School of Journalism of Majunga

All the students are very close to each other, cross-commenting on their blogs or exchanging tips (Patricia and Karenichia are best friends, the 2nd year at Majunga School of Journalism have invited the 1st and 3rd to blog). We also want to point that, at this moment, all the groups are fully autonomous at all and we’re about to make the leader bloggers turning into trainers themselves. Of course they still need specific training (adding more pictures on blogs, loading videos on the web, etc.) but have become very resourceful and are using frequently their local cybercafé : Teknet in Antananarivo, Orange in Tamatave and Alliance Française in Majunga. But we, at Foko, will keep on  finding more ways, funds and help to make their citizen media dreams come true !

Read the rest of this entry »

Last month, Stéphane went back to Tamatave and met Patrick who opened his blog during FBC 6. He brought us the guyz from the English Club and they both introduced them to Citizen Media.

Day 1 : June 27th 2008 Simple blogging session with 3 participants at the time. Knowing the very slow connexion in the provinces we started this technique back in June in Majunga, more attention was brought to each student during the 2-hour workshop.

Day 2 : June 28th 2008 The bloggers were unable to load their own pictures but amazingly had the chance to share few seconds from the GVO summit streaming from Budapest. They felt very proud to be part of FBC amazing community and are ready to put in good use their citizen media initiation.

Day 3 : June 29th 2008 podcasts and chatrooms , No rendez-vous with the global blogosphere on the Foko chatroom was possible this day because of too many interruptions. In place they made an awesome interview of Patrick (in english):

Patrick talks about blogging and the English Club

• BUEC: Barikadimy’s United English Club

BUEC is an English club which is exist at University of Tamatave. It was created by group of students included Rolland, Gildas, Paul, Vohary, Jacquinot, Jean D’Arc, Fredel, Lydovick, Urbain and Patrick is the President actual. It was on 2003 and every years the member is increasing nonstop. In this club, there is no teacher neither students but we help one another. It is a very big opportinuty for the people especially the students at University of Tamatave to increase their skill in English (…)We always got problems about the room where we can have our meeting. Normally we hve to have one teacher at least but because we are all students in and we’re all bit busy of our studies no one of us could be a teacher. Also as a club we have not enough materials like computer, TV. We only have one tape for leastening but sometimes we want to watch a film. more here from http://layshiyuu.wordpress.com

• The war

I think about the word life.I study economic so why I like doing analysis a little about its.The country under developping has a big problem.Now I tell about a malnourished,the children is sorrow they haven’t anything to eat and so on.But I don’t know why the rich country spends his money just for a war. And sometimes its has also traffik for aperson that means they sell a poor people for having a monney . The war or violence exist by a different way.This storry make’s me sorrow.If  you interesting for this what we should do ? from
http://violance.wordpress.com

• New blogs

http://bodoundjan.wordpress.com
http://hanitra085.wordpress.com
http://theophilusman.wordpress.com/
http://hkambora.wordpress.com//
http://clairesttuburn.wordpress.com/

See? They are ready to take over the world and are waiting for your  comment…

Last saturday Silo, who specializes in Malagasy Jazz, invited FOKO to make the Silo concert live on the Internet (a first for Malagasy audience !), but the Internet Service Provider did not fulfil its promises. The bloggers in town were present at the all 3 of the show locations all around Tamatave. It was also a great occasion to show our bloggers another fun way to practice their photography skills.

One of the three locations of the Silo Show : Stella Maris High-School

The other initiative was born when many bloggers lamented the poor Malagasy seen on the Internet, sparsed with liberties taken with the grammar etc…and so the “Aza ampijaliana ny tenintsika” (translated losely to “Do not mistreat our language!”) event was planned.
The event was held on Saturday, June 21 with Malagasy bloggers present, the usual FBC workshop taking place, and Patie representing FOKO and presenting what  FOKO Blog Clubs are about. The event was mostly fun, with games played online by the participants, but these were “serious” games about Malagasy proverbs, grammar, knowledge of Malagasy language in general.

Eddie Avila of Voces Bolivianas came for a visit and was offered some Malagasy lessons of the street language kind by Simp. Thanks for visiting, Eddie !

The next two weeks are going to be chock full of action for FOKO :
http://www.foko-madagascar.org/2008/06/21/podcast-foko-se-dedie-a-promouvoir-la-jeunesse-malgache/
with Lova and Mialy present at the Global Voices Online Summit in Budapest, meeting up with some bloggers based in Paris and most of all there will be another FOKO Blog Club in Tamatave, thanks to Stephane, our field manager, travelling there !
Stay tuned…

by Mialy Andriamananjara

Back in October 2007, we started the blogging project at a tiny cybercafé between close friends who wanted to share their knowledge and passion for blogging when gathering around a THB (a very well-known Malagasy beverage). Today we kept our rituals of enjoying our times first but extended our circle to a wider community and learned back from the amazing friends we met from the streets of Analakely to Mahabibo Market.

Many were present Saturday May 24th (After FBC 9) for the party organized for the blogging contest winners

(pictures here :Avylavitra, Patricia, Nombana, and the Namana Serasera supporters)

Our coordinators and members kept on finding ways, most of the time by improvising, to give more visibility to Citizen Media in Madagascar when the blossoming internet is reachable to only the few who can afford the connectivity and of course the digital knowledge. Because of humbleness, they shared very little about their everyday struggles to convince (people to join the workshops), produce (exceptional and original pieces) and …load their work (which is the most frustrating step). But we’ve started to notice from the nervosity and then the excitment they demonstrated when receiving feedbacks and reactions from sympathizers from all over the world.

Monsieur Vita, Director of the School of Journalism in Majunga, has invited Foko to formarly integrate Citizen Media to their cursus. Starting from last week, Lomelle, Rondro and their 2nd year class will help their 1st and 3rd year peers to the basics of blogging, podcasting and vidcasting ( Patricia in Antananarivo have been leading 2 workshops on her own now). This partnership will help Foko bring more attention to Malagasy provinces and open an official window to the school. We’re currently studying the best strategies to fructify our collaboration with the staff.

Very happy blogging class and improvised FBC.

Stéphane with Monsieur Vita the Director

From the Madagascar English Journal invitation to contribute to their weekly publication distributed to all the schools on the island, we managed to get our English speaking bloggers a dedicated column. Mrs Annelie Rozeboom from the American School of Antananarivo has kindly edited 4 articles from Cylnice and Zouboon when at the same recommending the authors to share more stories from the provinces and most of all touching interviews like this one with little Eliza.

Foko will carry on on improving media citizen skills to our experienced bloggers until the beginning 09-10 school year in October when we’ll open the workshops to new members. UN Youth Club of Antananarivo members have already suggested to learn more on internet and webdesign tools such as Photoshop, video editing and websites designing during their summer vacations with Foko. We’ll also focus more on Toamasina group now that Majunga have received their digital camera and support them the same way on producing more contents on their amazing region and lifestyle.

Congratulations Class of 2008 !!