March, 2009

Stories from March, 2009

Voces Bolivianas: Augmenting Digital Literacy In Bolivia

  29 March 2009

The Rising Voices grantee Voces Bolivianas has been featured in the Canal Solidario-One World media project recently. In this feature we have Voces Bolivianas bloggers discussing how Bolivians are dealing with the new Web 2.0 learning, portraying their indigenous culture, national days, rock scene and many more.

Liberia's Natural Born Bloggers

  27 March 2009

It is hard to imagine a place more difficult to keep a blog than a country that just barely has an electric grid. But a few ambitious, aspiring Liberian journalists are working hard to join their colleagues from the DR of Congo, Uganda, Zambia, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria on the frontiers of African new media.

Introductory Video to Ceasefire Liberia

  23 March 2009

Just west of Ivory Coast lies Liberia and its roughly 3.5 million inhabitants. Settled by free slaves from the United States in the early 19th century, Liberia fell into a 14-year dark period of civil war and lawlessness that concluded in late 2003 with the presence of ECOWAS and the United Nations.

Serbian Web Journalism School: Second Batch Completed

  22 March 2009

Rising Voices grantee Serbian Web Journalism School continued to impart interesting and innovative digital media trainings to budding web journalists of Serbia. Their second batch of participants completed their final tests with a practical assignment - covering the 37th FEST (film festival) in Belgrade.

Meet Liberia's Newest Bloggers

  18 March 2009

Last October nine Liberian journalists learned how to blog at a workshop at the American Embassy in Monrovia. I am now back in Monrovia with Kathleen Flynn and Ken Harper to help facilitate more blogging workshops. This video introduces some of Liberia's most recent journalists and students of journalism to try their hands at blogging.

Rising Voices Welcomes New Grantee from Central Asia

  16 March 2009

Rising Voices is supporting a new citizen media development project: Public Fund "Mental Health," located in the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan. Their main work involves providing psychological support to HIV-positive people.

FOKO: Reporting The Truth Without Fear

  15 March 2009

FOKO bloggers continues to be at the forefront of the coverage of the current political crisis in Madagascar overcoming the challenges of costly internet connections. Many of them are taking up micro-blogging (Twitter) as an easy and cost effective alternative and using Facebook to communicate between the fellow bloggers. Now everybody's concern is the safety of these citizen journalists in this increasingly tense political environment. But these fearless bloggers are defiant because they feel that reporting the truth to the world is very important as the mainstream media is very biased.

Hiperbarrio: Bringing La Loma To The World

  11 March 2009

The decision to revamp the activities of the Hiperbarrio project had paid off as we see that regular blog posts from the members were published to describe stories of their neighborhood. The members have also attended video workshops to learn to produce/edit short (one minute) videos and post them online with subtitles. And an update of the fund drive for building a home for the homeless Suso is included in this week's feature.

Proper Medication: A Step Towards A Normal Life

  9 March 2009

Pavel Kutsev, leader of the Ukrainian organization Drop-In Center, calls for the introduction of a new medication for substitution therapy programs, since the drug currently being used doesn't help patients return to a normal life. The letter has been signed by Kutsev's counterparts.

New Citizen Media Projects Foster Rising Voices in Ivory Coast, Liberia, China, Mongolia, and Yemen

  9 March 2009

Of the 270 project proposals we received from activists, bloggers, and NGO's all wanting to use citizen media tools to bring new communities - long ignored by both traditional and new media - to the conversational web, the following five are most representative of the innovation, purpose and goodwill that Rising Voices aims to support. Please join me in welcoming our new Rising Voices grantees.