Stories from January, 2012
Ukraine: Harm Reduction Activists Appeal to the Executive Director of the Global Fund
At the middle of January the Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Michel Kazatchkine visited Ukraine. Ukrainian harm reduction activists used this opportunity to advocate the rights of opiate replacement therapy (ORT) patients.
Closing the Gap in Indigenous Australia with Mobile Journalism
NT Mojos, a project in Australia's Northern Territory, empowers indigenous people to have a local voice and to provide a less marginalized view of everyday life by enabling them to create and share mobile stories. This post is republished thanks to the Mobile Media Toolkit.
Somalia Speaks: Amplifying Unheard Somalian Voices
Somalia is one of those developing countries who end up in world media for all the wrong reasons: civil war, famine, drought, Somalian pirates are to name a few. With the help of an Ushahidi based platform “Somalia Speaks“, Al Jazeera English is aggregating unheard voices from inside Somalia via SMS. The responses are translated into English and plotted onto a map.
Ségou Villages: Cruising the River Niger for Internet Literacy
The Ségou Villages Connection project in Mali is taking an interesting turn, in partnership with a UNESCO heritage preservation program. Boukary Konaté, a 2011 Rising Voices grantee, is currently cruising up the Niger river aboard a traditional Malian barge, docking every day in a new village to train school children and villagers to use the Internet.
Video Contest: Everyday Digital Native
The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), India, and HIVOS of the Netherlands are hosting the 2011 Digital AlterNatives Video Contest as a part of the ‘Digital Natives with a Cause’ project. The contest revolves around the theme “Everyday Digital Native” and asks participants to share stories on what makes their everyday life “digital”.
Rising Voices Call for Proposals for Citizen Media Outreach
Rising Voices is now accepting project proposals for 2012 microgrant funding of up to $4,000 USD for citizen media outreach projects. Applications are due no later than Friday, February 3, 2012.
Language Tools: Virtual Keyboards & Transliteration
Imagine you write in a non-Latin based script and you are stuck in a foreign airport internet kiosk trying to figure out how to email in your language. Probably the PC you are using has a different set of keyboard other than qwerty and their is no multilingual support in the OS. There are some online tools which can come to your rescue.
Nomad Green: Concerns On Ulaanbaatar
The environmental citizen journalists of Nomad Green are voicing their opinions on issues surrounding the degrading environment in Mongolia. The articles are originally posted in Mongolian language and some of them are being translated in Chinese and English. In this roundup we check some of the recent updates on the Nomad Green Website.
REPACTED: Looking Back And Learning From The Past
The former Rising Voices grantee REPACTED trained displaced Kenyans (during the 2007 election violence) living in the camps how to tell their own stories online so that their ordeal is not forgotten. This year Kenya's next election will be held. REPACTED is now on a mission to make Kenyans learn from the past and not to repeat the same mistakes.
Ukraine: Photo Art Helps Fighting AIDS
To mark the World AIDS Day in 2011 a photo exhibition of the project “AIDS- Open Faces” took place in Kiev. The exhibition was devoted to people whose life was affected by HIV/AIDS. It was organized by the private charity Elena Pinchuk AINTIAIDS Foundation. The pictures of HIV positive people and their families presented on the exhibition had been taken by a renowned photographer Brent Stirton from New York agency ‘Getty Images’.
Rising Voices Year in Review 2011
Rising Voices looks back at some of the highlights from our work in 2011, including welcoming new grantees, forging new partnerships, and organizing citizen media outreach events. We would also like to thank all those that accompany us on our mission of working towards a global online space much more representative with greater participation by all.
India: Crowdsourcing Traffic Violations On Facebook
India is one of the few countries in the world where its traffic police departments of many cities have joined social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, and are encouraging posting of crowdsourced information on Traffic violations. Thousands of users are following these pages and many are contributing photos and videos of traffic violations, so that police can take action.
