I think one of the urgence at FBC is to teach “internet” to the members. Lova did a great commenting about the lack of linking between blogs and external webistes, it only shows their “ignorance” (more in the sense of ” not knowing”) of internet and all the good use they can get from it.
Stéphane mentioned the “Yahoo box” where 90% of the members are staying safely, of course they chat a lot but most of the time they are not aware of the environment outside. In technical words : they have to learn how to copy-past links (CTRL+C and so on), explore the contents available online (Youtube, Flickr, Rising Voices posts) to illustrate their posts, ameliorate their blogs (Mr Wordpress must have little tips in his hat).
Zouboon and Patrick for example are exploring on their own but we need to give them more time from the FBC to teach time our quick tricks.

Sure! we ( i and Joan) are going to explain for all of our compatriot the importance of citizen media.

In my point of view, it s the one way of healthy democracy.

I have long been aware of all of the incredible successes that Foko has had in training more Malagasy citizen journalists and creating award-winning content, but this provides a very useful overview of some of the challenges the project has run into.

It sounds like, in addition to coordinating the workshops to train new bloggers, Foko must also do outreach work to explain to the Malagasy press and general public about the importance of citizen media for a healthy democracy. I think that it is important to remember that all of this takes time and that we’re just in the first chapters of online participatory media.

In my opinion, it makes lots of sense to work with English language clubs (or any foreign language, for that matter) because they will be eager to improve their writing skills and eager for feedback from others.

Thanks so much for this update Joan. Besides the slow and costly internet connection, have their been any other technical challenges?