Foko has just celebrated its 6 months of Blog Clubs and it was an occasion to salute the effort and energy all our coordinators and sponsors are putting in this great project. From the ones who spend amountless hours on networking looking for funds and contacts to the true heroes who are committing 200% of their energy in Madagascar and of course to our family, the Rising Voices community : THANK YOU !
We managed to recrute more than 20 bloggers from Mahajanga to Toamasina and integrate more and more communities. Since October 2007 we asked them first : “why do you want to join the Club?” . These are the answers : “I'd like to meet new friends”, “Will Malagasy from abroad read my blog?”, “It's a chance to improve my English”, “I want to write short stories”, “I want the world to know more about Madagascar”,…
As you already realized, our scheduled FBC workshops require improvisation (since the connexion gets cut off too often) and ingeniosity (because we're always short on money, tutors, cameras and posts!). For 6 months, we teached the basics of blogging and each member was free to come back on the next session, blog outside the hours and join our many outdoor activities. When the Flickr and video sessions started, the bloggers proved their skills and commitment. Each day you can find new images posted and oftenly commented by Lomelle, Poupoune, CPO groups on our Flickr album. With the undergoing contests, you'll find more videos on our Youtube and Dotsub pages . When Lindsay met Stéphane in Antananarivo this week-end, our coordinators helped Pati and Nombana (our FYI contest participants) for their videos which needed Hery‘s from Namana Serasera support for today editing session.
Lindsay and Pati after a very tiring but passionate video workshop
But the greatest achievement remains in everyone's tenacity to inform and share more and more news and stories when fighting tough conditions in Madagascar. Power or internet connection cut offs happen more than 10 times a day in the provinces; many of our members are still in high-school and university students and have exams ; difficulties to keep on blogging with the high rates of internet connexion ; uploading time require amountless hours; etc. To show them our appreciation and our interest in their work, we invite everyone to welcome our members from Mahajanga by posting a cheerful comment on their brand new blogs !
Which fruits and vegetable look more tasty : Toamasina or Mahajanga ones ?
I’m so amazed by the reporting coming from the FOKO citizen journalists. I hope that Pati and Nombana’s videos inspire more of us to action.
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