Photo provided by Zubair Torwali, founder of Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi; used by Rising Voices with permission.

Rising Voices note: Our monthly 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 opportunities for communities to fully participate online. Read here for previous editions of this newsletter.

Hello readers, how are you doing?

We’d like to open this issue with some exciting news: This year, Linguapax decided to give its International Award to Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (aka IBT), an organization founded by our friend Zubair Torwali!

In May last year, we had the honor of having Mr. Torwali guest host our @AsiaLangsOnline campaign for a week.  We were very impressed by his dedication to the preservation of local minority languages and to the empowerment of local communities in northern Pakistan.

If you’d like to learn about what IBT has accomplished to win this award, you can read the announcement piece by Linguapax.  If you'd like to know more about Mr. Torwali and his work in his own words, you can read Mr. Torwali’s Q&A with us back in 2020.

Along this line, we’d love to take you to Malaysia for a student-organized web event, aiming to promote local indigenous languages, and see what we can learn from them.  → “Malaysian students share lessons using digital tools to promote indigenous languages”

Do you want to take your career up a notch? Every year, the Nieman Foundation selects up to 24 journalists from all media around the world to support a year of study at Harvard.  These fellows will not only have the opportunity to strengthen their professional skills but to build new connections. See the details here. Application due: December 1, 2021/January 31, 2022

Have you used apps that utilize voice recognition or any other voice technology of the sort?  Ever wondered how machines learn to make sense of what we say?  You now have the chance to help build an open-source voice database with Mozilla Common Voice and help de-bias voice AI.  Read along if you’d love to be part of this initiative!

Where will our economies go post-pandemic?  Can inclusion, sustainability, and development go hand in hand? When it comes to media: How do we find the balance between its sustainability and its independence, while maintaining its diversity?  If you ask these questions, too, we think you’d want to be part of the Trust Conference 2021.  Date: November 17–18, 2021

• The race to document endangered languages, now that we have the technology via Gizmodo
• How indigenous creators are nurturing a space on TikTok to educate and entertain via PBS NewsHour
• Publishing for WhatsApp? Here are three great ways to do it via jamlab (the Journalism and Media Lab)
• Can ‘freemium’ internet hotspots really bring Guatemala online? via Rest of World
• A weekend at tribal wireless bootcamp via American Indian Policy Institute

Subscribe to the Rising Voices Newsletter