I am from Dhaka, Bangladesh and I have been bridgeblogging the Bangladeshi and South Asian Blogosphere in Global Voices since 2005. Social Media is my passion. I like to follow the groundbreaking outreach projects of Rising Voices and write about them.
Latest posts by Rezwan
Crowdsourcing Helps Bangladeshi Students Read With Their Fingertips
Banglabraille is a new project using Unicode and crowdsourcing techniques to create textbooks for tens of thousands of visually impaired students in Bangladesh.
Using the Left Brain to Teach the Right: Visual Computer Programming
Scratch is a programming language designed for use by educators and young people to teach the building blocks of computer programming. It is a visual, block-based, computer programming language editor available in 40 languages.
RV At 5: Witnessing The Rise Of Yemeni Women
One of the notable Rising Voices grantee project was “Empowerment of Yemeni Women Activists in New Media Techniques”, led by Ghaida'a Al Absi. She thought that the EWAMT project is like a candle among other candles, which are lighting up the darkness in Yemen. And it proved right as some of the female participants were bold enough to write about the political upheavals during the Yemen revolution in 2011.
OpenWatch: Using Mobile To Enable Public Monitoring
OpenWatch is a participatory citizen media project which uses mobile technology to enable public monitoring of corrupt practices and repression. The project consists of two parts, a free mobile phone application for Android and iOS which invisibly records audio and video, and an open source software to collect the recordings and host in a portal for user access.
RV at 5: New Media For Health Activists
In 2008 Rising Voices and Open Society Institute's Health Media Initiative awarded micro-grants to six health-focused citizen media outreach projects. One of the grantees was the AZUR Development organization's Aids Right project from Brazzaville, Congo which trained communication officers of local AIDS organizations in digital story telling, podcasting, and the creation of blogs to document the stigma and discrimination of people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS in Congo.
RV at 5: FOKO – A Reflection by Joan Razafimaharo
FOKO from Madagascar is one of the most successful grantees of Rising Voices which has transformed Malagasy forumists into bloggers. FOKO co founder Joan Razafimaharo sends in her reflections on the journey of this exemplary project.
Pakistan: Hoshmedia – Amplifying The Voices Of Pakistani Youth
As the popularity of citizen media is growing in Pakistan, more and more people are using social media platforms and tools to share their opinions. With a vision to creating a space in Pakistan’s mainstream media for young bloggers and online activists, 2011 Knight Fellow Sahar Habib Ghazi founded Hosh media. Hosh hopes to highlight these voices to more people by syndicating the best contents with the mainstream media and creating a bigger impact in the country.
Featured Guide: Social Advocacy Toolkit For Activists And Non-Profits
In the recently concluded Google Internet at Liberty 2012 conference Socialbrite.org has launched a toolkit featuring eleven guides on social and political advocacy. These guides are aimed to be a good starting point for activists, change agents and political reformers and help them learn tactics for effective campaigns. It also enables them to use different monitoring and metrics tools, platforms and other resources.
Featured Tools: Mobile In A Box
With the proliferation of mobile phone in marginal and underrepresented communities it is important for citizen journalists and activists to learn the usability and tactics of this widely available technology. Mobiles in-a-box from the Tactical Technology Collective is a collection of tools and guides designed to help advocacy and activist organizations use mobile technology in their work.
Witness: Learning To Use Videos For Change
WITNESS empowers people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice using user generated videos. It has trained individuals from more than 80 countries through hands-on workshops. To expand its reach WITNESS has launched its comprehensive training curriculum on human rights advocacy through video, which is available for download for free.
Speak Out Tunisia: Training Citizen Journalists For A Free And Fair Press
Speak Out Tunisia is a citizen journalism training project that has taught a diverse group of Tunisian citizens about digital media and online journalism. After the Tunisian revolution, Speak Out Tunisia seeks to return the power of a free and fair press to the Tunisian people. Anne Medley, in association with Le PaCTE Tunisien, taught the beginners group of citizen journalists in the southern town of Kebili and an advanced group in Tunis.
India: Awaaz.De – Giving Voice To Marginal And Disadvantaged Communities
Awaaz.de is an innovative software program (voice-XML based Interactive Voice Response system) that allows development organizations to connect with rural and marginalized communities by providing on-demand, many-to-many information access through mobile phones. People can access Awaaz.De applications by dialing regular phone numbers to work with voice contents through automated voice interfaces.
Featured Guide: Data Journalism Handbook – A New Approach To Storytelling
Data-driven journalism is a journalistic process of telling stories after mining and filtering large data sets freely available online. To create a comprehensive step-by-step guide to data journalism, last November at a 48 hour workshop at Mozilla Festival in London, a number of journalists and developers started a booksprint. The Handbook (freely downloadable online) has been formally launched on 28th of April, 2012 at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia.
