Chariboan Joi

Nueva Betania, Yarinacocha, Peru – Joined Rising Voices in 2014

A storytelling festival planned for the community of Nueva Betania on the outskirts of Yarinacocha in Ucayali, Peru will be the starting point for this project. With support from the Arkana Alliance, newly trained citizen reporters from the Organization of Indigenous Youth from the Ucayali Region (OJIRU) are exploring how to use mobile phones to cover the event and help document the legends and stories shared by the local artists in the native Shipibo language and translated into other languages.

From there, the citizen reporters are creating digital stories about their communities focusing on preserving cultural traditions and language, but also examining the effects of extractivism on the surrounding environment. By establishing partnerships with local radio stations and employing other distribution techniques, such as loud speakers in public spaces, the citizen reporters will be able to better reach those without internet access.