Rising Voices

Voces Bolivianas has recently started its outreach workshop in Trinidad city of Beni, a remote district in the Amazon region. 19 participants were taught the basics of blogs and they opened their own blogs.

Diana Chamia, an 18-year-old journalism student who was taught how to blog in a Foko workshop in Mahajanga, first met one-year-old baby Kamba when she accidentally missed her busstop and was forced to walk. Over the next few months she and her blog would play an integral role in helping Kamba grow up to lead a normal life.

We hear the term ‘citizen journalism’ almost everywhere. But to be precise, what is it? Why do we need to embrace citizen journalism? What effects does it have on a society and how can it give a voice to the people who are under reported in the mainstream media?

We will find the answer to those questions in this feature and learn how the Rising Voices projects are embracing citizen journalism.

The ConVerGentes project of HiperBarrio made their way from Medellín to the capital city, Bogotá, at the end of June to attend Campus Party, one of the Spanish-speaking world’s largest technology conferences. Organizing the trip required the participation of all involved, but as we see, it was well worth it.

The women of Nari Jibon traveled a long way to overcome shyness, opening themselves up, build their confidence and were trained to tell their stories to the world via blogging. With much effort and support from the educators and a little help from the friends of Nari Jibon the students are now publishing stories, poems photos etc. in their own blogs.

Mario Duran, one of the leaders of the Voces Bolivianas team in El Alto, put together this video for the attendees of the 2008 Global Voices Summit in Budapest, Hungary. It’s a great brief reminder of what the Voces Bolivianas project is accomplishing.

When asked “how can we help” by an audience member at the Global Voices Summit in Budapest, Hungary, Mialy Andriamananjara of the FOKO Madagascar project said it was skills not money that her project needed the most. By using social networking travel sites like Dopplr, we can help introduce highly skilled travelers to Rising Voices outreach projects. Groups like Nari Jibon in Dhaka, Bangladesh have already discovered the magic of making it work.

The second day of the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit projected different works and achievements of Global Voices Online. The Rising Voices project was certainly in the spotlight as it involves in giving the voice to those who need it the most and improves the lives of people who are neglected by the media and the communities. We look at the presentation of the Rising Voices project in the summit and the reactions of the participants and the media.

Rising Voices and Open Society Institute’s Health Media Initiative are happy to announce the six newest health-focused citizen media outreach projects. We received over 110 proposals from health activists and organizations based in over 50 different countries. The six selected grantees represent the most innovative applications of citizen media tools like blogs, podcasts, and online video to help further the advocacy goals of public health organizations, and to empower the communities they work with.

It has been one year since Rising Voices awarded its first round of five outreach grants to project in Sierra Leone, Colombia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, and India. Those first five grantees where then joined by five more projects in December, 2007. Today, as we are about to announce our newest round of six more citizen media outreach projects, we would like to take the time to step back and reflect on all that the first 10 projects have accomplished over the past year.