Grantees

Read here for a history of the microgrant program.

These are the citizen media outreach projects that Rising Voices is currently supporting. These projects were awarded a microgrant as part of our annual competition. In addition, all of the projects receive technical support, mentoring, and content amplification through the Global Voices community.

Current Grantees

Past Rising Voices Grantees

These are our alumni projects that are no longer being supported by Rising Voices. The projects are from the years 2007-2013, and most have completed their activities. Other projects have grown and continued with their activities.

Common Community

In Lira, Uganda, collective of young people called the Theatre Technology House has been using community radio and audio podcasts to engage local residents about issues important to them. Now through an audio podcast soap in both the English and Luo languages, the group is providing much needed information about the election process.

Tsimane’ Linguistic Universe

Digital content in the Tsimane’ language is seldom found online. This project from San Borja, Bolivia is working with local students, teachers, community leaders, and linguists to change that. Through workshops teaching how to create audio, video, and text, a new generation of young people will be able to see their language and culture reflected on the Internet.

Jalaibi

Pakistan is a country where the usual narrative often focuses on negativity. Jalaibi is a multi-city blogging project that seeks to empower new writers to share positive stories about their communities on a collective blog, as a way to begin to balance out the stereotypical coverage.

Friends of Januária

In a city where mismanagement by local authorities is commonplace, a more informed population can in turn become more active in monitoring their leaders. Local organization Friends of Januária are engaging young residents of the Brazilian town, teaching them how to access public information and to write about governance and transparency issues important to them.

Voices of Hope

Powerful typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit the Philippines in 2013 leaving behind a trail of destruction. The Voices of Hope project is training young people in the town of Estancia, who were affected by the natural disaster to become citizen journalists reporting on the storm's aftermath, reconstruction efforts, and about the community's resilience.

Girl Activists of Kyrgyzstan

Young women in Kyrgyzstan are often the targets of discrimination and violence, and their stories are often left unheard. Teenage girl activists in Bishkek are reaching out to other girls around the country through trainings and virtual connections, so that they can share their stories and their voices on their collective blog.

Yadiko Uruk + Sons of Yadiko

Ever Kuiru, a Witoto – M+n+ka from the Colombian Amazon is rediscovering his roots by sharing the digital stories found on audio recordings of his late father sharing the traditions and culture with young residents of Cabildo Milán. Through this project, he is also inspiring others to learn how to record and create their own audio stories.

Empowering Cloghers Project

Many young students from the countryside arrive to the capital for their studies, and they have the potential to act as bridges between rural and urban Cambodia. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights teaches rural young women to become “cloghers” (female bloggers) to share stories about human rights issues facing the rural Cambodia.

Aché Djawu (The Aché Word)

The Aché indigenous community has had a trying past, and as a result many members were dispersed across the country. Now the six Aché indigenous communities in Paraguay are using smartphones to upload photos and news about community issues, traditions, and challenges that are facing their dispersed communities, as well as to connect with one another.

Radio Los Inestables

This weekly live radio program is broadcast from the patio of the local psychiatric hospital in Córdoba, Argentina. The patients choose the week's topics sharing serious discussions and radio theater related to mental health issues. Radio participants are now taking their radio show to the Internet with audio podcasts shared on social media, where they receive feedback from listeners.

Media Literacy & Resisting Manipulation

The media landscape in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be difficult to navigate especially during election season. The local organization the Post-Conflict Research Center has been working with young people from across the country with media literacy skills-building to be critical of the media that they consume, and they share their reflections on a group blog.

The South of South

Collaboration between local musicians and artists, including those that sing and rap in the Maya language, are creating tracks and “freeing” them so that others can remix as a way to further free them using Creative Commons licenses. The project is implemented by members of the Colectivo Santiaguero based in the city of Mérida, in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

Against the Current

Of the 5,000 tribal members of the Umoⁿhoⁿ living in the rural reservation community in Eastern Nebraska, there are less than ten fluent speakers remaining. Through participatory video, the project works with local residents creating short clips capturing daily conversational skills, so that more people have the opportunity to learn and revitalize the language.

Tz'utujil Tziij Pa Nimk'atz

From the Community Library Rija'tzuul Na'ooj in San Juan La Laguna and the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages, this project is building an offline/online community of young people that want to learn how to use citizen media and social networks to revitalize the Tz'utujil language and encourage a new generation of speakers.

Amazonía Sur: Resistance and Ancestral Alternatives

In the heart of the Southern Amazon in Ecuador, the project is teaching local residents of Sarayaku and from neighboring communities how to create participatory video telling the story of the importance protecting their natural surroundings and cultural traditions, which includes the story of resistance and the way of Sumak Allpa (Forest Alive).

Mapping for Niger

Much of rural Niger is not well-represented online. Thanks to the work of university geography students in Niamey, who are using OpenStreetMap tools and social media to take part in a collaborative open-source humanitarian mapping project, their rural communities are now part of the digital landscape.

Jatta Wöötanö

In the Yekuana indigenous community of Boca de Ninchare located within the Caura River Basin in Venezuela, a group of young people are learning to become digital “ethno-communicators,” a term used to describe individuals who use social communication and have a deep knowledge of their culture with a desire to share knowledge.

Shuar y Achuar: Our Digital Stories in Our Own Language

Community radio stations in the Ecuadorian Amazonian indigenous communities Shuar and Achuar have a rich history of transmitting in their native languages about issues important to this region. Now the stations want to learn how to take these intercultural stories to the web using free software tools to stream online and create blogs to complement their traditional transmission.