Stories about FOKO
Blog Action Day 2009: Rising Voices Projects Discuss Climate Change
Today is the Blog Action Day and this annual event aims to unite the world's bloggers where they write about a single topic in a single day to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion on the subject. Some of the members of Rising Voices projects participated in this event and we bring to you a brief round-up.
Malagasy Blogger Reflects Upon Climate Change Conference and G20 Summit
Sept, 27th marked the end of a busy week-long journey for Malagasy blogger and Foko coordinator Stephane, a.k.a pakysse. Stephane took off from Antananarivo, Madagascar on the 21st and landed in JFK, NYC on the 22nd for the Climate Change Conference in New York City at the United Nations Headquarters and the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh.
Foko Bloggers Represent Madagascar at World Summits
Two members of Foko Madagascar were recently invited to major international summits to represent their country and community in discussions about development, climate change, and poverty.
FOKO: August 2009 Updates
The Rising Voices grantee FOKO Blog Club from Madagascar never has a dull moment. In this update we discuss about their recent photography workshop, updates on supporting the family of baby Kamba, interview of FOKO members by BBC, a blissful marriage between two FOKO participants and much much more.
FOKO: The Second Barcamp In Madagascar
On the 4th of July FOKO arranged a gathering of the Malagasy blogging community and the professional journalists to discuss how citizen media can contribute to a more complete coverage of the recent political crisis in Madagascar. The meeting was organized according to the format of a Barcamp and the FOKO bloggers wrote about the event.
FOKO: Expansion And Collaborations
FOKO has completed its expansion efforts in Northern Madagascar. The SAVA region and Antsiranana are now part of the FOKO network. FOKO is helping to set up new media facilities at the Press Center in Diego. Another feat of the project is successfully conducting a blog and new media workshop for IST students.
A New Era of Human Rights Advocacy
Representatives from several Rising Voices projects took part in this month's "Soul of the New Machine" conference convened by the University of California at Berkeley's Human Rights Center. Their comments and their projects are indicative of a new era of human rights advocacy.
FOKO: Doing More For The Community
Although many FOKO members were starting classes at University, April was a busy month with activities for FOKO Blog Club. FOKO bloggers participated in a number of events like get together of bloggers, new media training for community members and they blogged about them besides reporting about the recent political unrest.
FOKO: Remembering Baby Kamba
We start today with a sad news. Remember baby Kamba? A determined 18-year-old blogger and member of Rising Voices grantee FOKO Madagascar with the help of his fellow Malagasy bloggers raised funds for one year old baby Kamba's operation and he recovered from his facial disfigurement caused by a rare disease. A couple of weeks ago we got this sad news from Avylavitra that baby Kamba suddenly fell ill and has died after he was taken to a hospital. Read also updates of other activities of FOKO Madagascar in this week's feature.
FOKO: Reporting The Truth Without Fear
FOKO bloggers continues to be at the forefront of the coverage of the current political crisis in Madagascar overcoming the challenges of costly internet connections. Many of them are taking up micro-blogging (Twitter) as an easy and cost effective alternative and using Facebook to communicate between the fellow bloggers. Now everybody's concern is the safety of these citizen journalists in this increasingly tense political environment. But these fearless bloggers are defiant because they feel that reporting the truth to the world is very important as the mainstream media is very biased.
FOKO: Ushahidi Comes To Madagascar
Rising Voices grantee FOKO’s members were at the forefront of the recent coverage of Tropical Storm Eric, Cyclone Fanele, and the recent protests and political turmoil in Madagascar by local citizen journalists of Madagascar. While bloggers from the capital Antananarivo are still actively reporting on the events happening on different key spots of the capital, FOKO Madagascar has introduced the Ushahidi engine, the powerful citizen media platform to report the crisis. Using SMS and web the silent majority of the citizens of Madagascar will record a detailed factual and location based report of the crisis in the country (political or environmental) in FOKO Ushahidi, which will plot them on a map.
Protests in Madagascar and the Importance of Citizen Journalism Training
The recent coverage of Tropical Storm Eric, Cyclone Fanele, and the ongoing protests and political turmoil in Madagascar by local citizen journalists reveals the importance of 1.) citizen journalism training programs, 2.) the translation and contextualization of local content for a global audience, and 3.) networks of media groups so that local voices can be amplified and understood when breaking news hits.
FOKO: A New Year Begins
So far FOKO Blog Club, the Rising Voices grantee from Madagascar has completed 13 workshops in 4 locations in Madagascar. And what a year it was as most of the growth happened in 2008. 2009 will be a new year for Foko as blogger-members are slowly taking over charge from the coordinators and facilitators to take the project forward.
