Stories about Hiper-Barrio
The Read and Write Library
Public libraries are transforming from centers of reception to centers of creation, transmission, and communication. In Latin America, the movement toward a more participatory library system is being led by a small satellite library in Medellín, Colombia and BiblioRedes, the national library network of Chile.
HiperBarrio: Achievements and looking ahead
HiperBarrio's presence at Medelink 2008, a local festival of digital culture, might have helped the citizen media outreach project discover a model of sustainability while extending their work to more communities on the outskirts of Medellín.
Women Hold Up Half the Sky: A Poetry Jam
In celebration of International Women's Day, Rising Voices grantee and Nari Jibon founder, Kathryn Ward, came up with the idea of a friendly poetry competition among Rising Voices bloggers. Participants of the ten citizen media outreach projects were given a week to write and submit their poems related to the theme "women hold up half the sky."
Three Women Leaders Make Their Voices Heard
When Rising Voices first launched in May of last year, we hoped that at least some of the participants of the outreach projects would emerge as strong leaders and capable trainers to replicate the citizen media workshops among their own networks of friends and family. We never expected, however, that those leaders would emerge so soon and that the great majority would turn out to be women. This week's feature article is a translation of a post by Professor Álvaro Ramírez, who teaches media and communication at the University of Bergen, about three of those leaders.
Jorge Jurado Raps About Citizen Media
Jorge is one of about 20 young people in the peripheral working class neighborhood of San Javier La Loma who are using citizen media to rescue the forgotten history of their community. His song "ConVerGentes" which he performed in this video in early January 2008 discusses the potential of using participatory media to rescue the forgotten history and culture of local communities.
Come Explore New Videos at Rising Voices
The first round of Rising Voices outreach projects have already been training participants in underrepresented communities how to use the tools of citizen media for just over seven months now. Now many of the projects are taking their media production skills to the next level by using Windows Movie Maker to produce short video documentaries that reveal the realities of the communities where they live.
The Paniagua Band
One thing you'll notice immediately if you visit the outlying community of La Loma in Medellín, Colombia is that nearly the entire community has the same three or four last names. One of the most common is "Paniagua" - the mythical origin of which is explained in the above video by blogger and talented musician Dneiber Sady.
Rayones by Jorge Jurado
Vandalism or a legitimate form of cultural expression? Is tagging a form of visual contamination or does the writing on the wall tell us something more about the communities we live in? Jorge Jurado meditates on the significance and motivation behind the words on the walls in La Loma, Medellin, Colombia.
HiperBarrio's Citizen Journalists Bring Their Local Community Together
With just seven months of experience, the young and extremely motivated participants of HiperBarrio have blossomed into genuine citizen journalists. By rescuing their community's forgotten history, they have also helped bring it closer together.
Review of Rising Voices Projects
We have witnessed an incredibly sense of community take place among the participants of each of the first five Rising Voices projects. They have become more than just bloggers. In fact, through their weblogs, they have become much better friends. Over the next six months hopefully those friendships will extend from one project to the next, over borders, differing cultures and languages.
New Bloggers Use Poetry to Describe Their Communities, Feelings, Friends
The new bloggers of Rising Voices outreach projects in Colombia, Bolivia, and Bangladesh are more than just up-and-coming citizen journalists. They have also discovered the power of prose to reveal glimpses of the human emotions that bring us together and the local differences that make each of our communities unique.
The First Six Months of Rising Voices
As we all get ready to enter 2008, Rising Voices celebrates its first six months of existence. It is time to step back, reflect on where we've come and think about where we are going.
Suso, Gratitude, and Human Dignity
Every neighborhood has it's own local set of celebrities who become either famous or infamous for their talents, idiosyncrasies, and personal histories. In San Javier La Loma, a hillside working class community on the outskirts of Medellín, one of the most well-known local celebrities, "Filthy Suso", had, until recently, also been one of the most enigmatic. Thanks to the work of HiperBarrio, a citizen journalism outreach project of Rising Voices, the story of "Filthy Suso" is now known both locally and internationally.
