
Tweet bird Image by Id-iom and used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 Creative Commons license.
Rising Voices note: Our biweekly newsletter provides a summary of our recent blog posts about all aspects of digital inclusion including access and adoption of digital tools, as well as different ways and opporunities for communities to fully participate online. Read here for previous editions of this newsletter.
International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is taking place on August 9th. To join the world in celebration of this special day, Rising Voices is partnering with the Digital Empowerment Foundation and the O Foundation on a new rotating Twitter campaign to bring the voices of Asian indigenous communities to our readers.
Subhashish Panigrahi, a member of the Global Voices community and cofounder of the O Foundation, will be serving as our first guest host of the @AsiaLangsOnline Twitter account starting on August 6th and will be sharing issues, challenges, as well as opportunities he has encountered in working with marginalized communities in South Asia. In addition to Subhashish, you will also hear from a diverse group of hosts about their work in promoting languages such as Eastern Tharu, Sherpa, and many more indigenous languages throughout Asia. Please stay tuned!
MORE FROM THE RISING VOICES BLOG
For this issue, we’d like you to meet two recent hosts of our rotating Twitter project on African language digital activism (@DigiAfricanLang). We would like to thank Kpénahi Traoré for sharing with us her work on the Bambara language and Christian Bwaya for his work on the Swahili language. Please read the Q&A posts to learn more about them and their work!
Also in this issue, we’d like to introduce you to three recent guest-hosts of @ActLenguas — indigenous language digital activists from Latin America. Victoria Gimena Tinta Quispe [es] (Aymara, spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes), Genner Llanes Ortiz [es] (Mayan of Yucatán, Mexico), and Manuel Nichim Ch'en (Manuel de Jesús Pérez Pérez) [es] (Tsotsil from Chiapas, Mexico). In their profile posts, you’ll get to know more about them and their work in revitalizing/promoting of their native languages.
And if you are curious about how Native American and First Nations language revitalization efforts are being aided by the internet and technology, you should check out what our recent hosts of @NativeLangsTech have to say about their work in digital activism for these languages. We present you the Q&A blog post with a recent host Margaret Noodin (for the Anishinaabe language spoken in the Minnesota-Wisconsin area of the United States).
OPPORTUNITIES | SCHOLARSHIPS & FELLOWSHIPS
The ICANN67 Public Meeting is coming up in early 2020 and its ICANN Fellowship Program is open for applications. If you are interested in the operation of the Domain Name System and the security/stability of the global Internet, this is for you. Please see here for details. Application due: August 18, 2019 at 23:59 (UTC)
Coconet II, a digital rights camp for Southeast Asia, is also calling for applications to attend. Do you want to join like-minded film-makers, researchers, journalists, human rights advocates, and technologists from across Asia in October for networking, skill developing, and possibly collaborations? Please visit their site for details and/or apply here. Application due: August 11, 2019 at 11.59pm (GMT +8)
Indigenous Connectivity Summit 2019, an Internet Society event, is open for registration! This event aims to bring together members of the indigenous communities as well as Internet service providers, researchers, and policy makers alike in working toward better Internet access for the indigenous communities throughout North America. Please see here for further details. Date: November 12-15, 2019 / Location: Hilo, Hawaii
ADDITIONAL READINGS, LISTENINGS, and VIEWINGS
- Deaf Influence on Consumer Technology via HuffPost
- The Internet Opens a Window to the Deaf World via HuffPost
- Internet access key to protecting threatened Indigenous languages via thestar.com (Toronto Star Newspapers Limited)
- Community Networks Webinar 201903 Internet Society Nigeria Chapter as presented by ISOC Nigeria Chapter via YouTube
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Since Rising Voices launched in 2007, we’ve supported nearly 100 underrepresented communities through training, mentoring, microgrants and connections with peer networks. Our support has helped these groups develop bottom-up approaches to using technology and the internet to meet their needs and enhance their lives.
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