Stories from August, 2011
Ségou Villages: Praying for Rain
During the month of August, residents of the Ségou region in Mali suffered from a scarcity of rain. This had negative repercussions on their agricultural activities, threatening the entire season. All that was left to do was pray. Finally after a long wait, the rains arrived allowing residents to celebrate the end of Ramadan with peace of mind. Ségou Villages Connection project participants write about this difficult time.
Languages: Jean Came Poulard on Haitian Creole
The Indigenous Tweets project recently interviewed Jean Came Poulard, an active Haitian Twitterer and software developer working with Logipam, helping to develop and promote open source software and resources for Haitian Creole on the web.
Featured Blogger: Oumar Dembélé
Meet Oumar Dembélé, a primary schoolteacher in Cinzana-Gare, one of Ségou Region villages. Oumar is also one of the participants in the Rising Voices grantee project Ségou Villages Connection. In this email interview, Oumar shares the state of technology in Ségou, the needs to improve this situation, and his aspirations for the future.
Ukraine: The Pluses and Minuses of Harm Reduction
How does substitution therapy change the life of the people living with the drug addiction? Bloggers of the Association of Substitution Treatment Advocates of Ukraine use their blogs to share their personal and firsthand stories.
Guinea-Bissau: Heavy Rains Damage Local School
The months between June and October are considered to be the rainy season in Guinea-Bissau, which can affect daily life throughout the country. A school used as a meeting place for the RV grantee Youth Voices of Bandim and Enterramento suffered heavy damage as a result of these storms.
Minya: More Rural Voices from Dawadeyya Village
As part of the Rising Voices grantee project Women of Minya Day by Day, women living in the rural village of Dawadeyya in Minya, Egypt continue to share their thoughts about the ongoing changes in Egyptian society, as well as personal stories about their life at home.
Featured Blogger: Yaya Coulibaly
Yaya Coulibaly is an agronomist in Cinzana-Gare, a village located in the Ségou region. He is also a participant in the Rising Voices grantee project Ségou Villages Connection, where he has taken part in various citizen media trainings conducted, as a way to tell some of the stories of these rural communities despite many difficulties in regards to internet connectivity.
Argentina: The Cultural Shed of Piedrabuena Neighborhood
What was once a warehouse for the Colón Theater in Buenos Aires has now become the Piedrabuenarte Cultural Shed, which brings together the neighborhood of Piedrabuena to take part in a wide range of cultural activities. Members of the community have been documenting daily life with citizen media, and there are plans to work with the young people to contribute to their YouTube channel.
Ukraine: Substitution Therapy Programs at Home and Abroad
Blogger Pavel Kutsev of the project Drop-In Center compares how substitution therapy is perceived in other countries in comparison to his country of Ukraine. Cartoonists also published drawings about the subject in the Drop-In Center's online newsletter.
Argentina: La Flecha Engaging Youth Through Citizen Media
La Flecha is an organization based in Buenos Aires, Argentina that engages youth in the public schools of the city teaching them how to create citizen media to begin and sustain conversations about issues that affect their daily lives in their communities.
