FOKO Madagascar

With two English clubs associated to FOKO, BUEC (Barikadimy’s United English Club from Tamatave) and ICE (I’m crazy about English in Tananarive) more posts are now published in English (exactly 176 today). Malagasy along with French were the two official languages in Madagascar before the addition recently of English. It is not always an easy task promoting its use with French having been imposed during last century colonial era and Malagasy, particularly Merina dialect, being common in writing and speaking in every the regions. In fact a large proportion of Malagasy bloggers are only publishing in their mother thongue to keep the culture alive on internet and to improve the vocabulary with the addition of new terms related to technology. But how are things doing back in Madagascar? What are the challenges? Let’s read from ICE and BUEC :

The Challenge of Spelling in English from ICE Club website

November 21st, 2008, there was an interesting Friday Talk session at American Cultural Center ( ACC) from 12:30 to 2 p.m. During that day ;the topic was ” The Challenge of Spelling in English”; presented by the Regional English language Officer Eran Williams.
How well can we master the english language. Is it enough just knowing how to speak; read ;and write. Sometimes even when we write we get stuck in writing some words. The problem is that we don’t know how to spell it correctly. So we end up ; misspelling it. (…)

(…)Why can’t we have our own Spelling Bee competition here in english or Malagasy or french. It won’t be a bad idea. 

in the comments section Andry adds :

I sincerely believe that we, as “English lovers”, should get back to reading books, writting letters with a paper and a pen, listening to radio plays, and discussing topics which really matter. I think that if we take the challenge, we will all benefit from that.

In the Eastern coast, their friends at BUEC are discussing the same echues :

WHY ENGLISH? The creators remarc that there are a lot of students after they got their BACC degree and they have to go at University, there they had no opportinuty to encrease their knowledge in term of English. And as e know that there is no way to follow English subject here in Tamatave because it’s doesn’t exist yet. At the same time we know the importance of English nowaday so we decided to create one club, is the place where the students can increase their knowledge on English.

he (Mr White, the newly elected BUEC president) really want all of the member can express English correctly, but that needs a lot of effort from eah students but that not enough if there is no teacher or some tape or CD video, to teach us what exactly the student must do, also very diffiocult to attend the aims.

Meeting time at BUEC

Moonlight shares about the different social activities at English Clubs : 

 their club MLEC ( Municipal Library English Club is divided into comities: Tourism comity; Youth Social Comity; Fundraising Comity. So if you want to join their club, you have to choose a comity. Like all other clubs , they have other activities like camping; picnics,…… 

BUEC members

And finally let’s show our support to the pioneers by posting hundred of comments on their blogs especially with the come back of Tamatave’s bloggers :

http://clairesttuburn.wordpress.com/ ,
 http://violance.wordpress.com/,
 http://layshiyuu.wordpress.com/, 

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

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)

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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 !

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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