Proposals from April 2, 2013
Finalist – Australia: Replenish the Earth – Voices from Aboriginal Australians
Project REARTH aims to promote social justice. By training young Aboriginal participants in film and photography, this project will document stories from the original custodians of Australian land, resulting in a locally produced and locally directed series of short films and photo-essays exploring issues including land rights, cultural preservation and connection to country . The project will create a “film-photo-blog” where local Aboriginal Australians of NSW and QLD will be at the centre of social change.
Finalist – Colombia: Radio and Forum Mariamulata
Create a Radio (internet and radio wave) and a network communication system for Rincón. We will set up first a social Forum for Mariamulata Cultural Center, then an internet radio station open to local and communitarian use. The oral tradition and storytelling roots are rich as music and culture. .We will use the machines and the internet service already installed.Three specialist and experienced people that had already worked with radio and internet opensource technologies will do the workshops. Participants will be invited by the local tutors and active people from the village.
Finalist – El Salvador: Yankwit Tunal (New Sun)
We are empowering young people in the management of ICT in order to promote and make visible the Nahuat language and culture. Through training workshops and alternative media, young people will learn to do interviews, videos and audios in order to document the nahuat culture. It is hoped that these young people will make up a team of young journalists who regularly motivate other young people and the local community to appreciate their culture, to reclaim the Nahuat history, and to highlight a group rarely represented in the media.
Finalist: Mapping for Niger
The project will create a Volunteer Technical Community (VTC) by training and mobilizing Nigerien students in ‘collaborative open source humanitarian mapping’ to increase inclusive information sharing in crisis preparedness, international solidarity and citizen agency through targeted digital capacity building and outreach. The VTC will then engage key humanitarian actors in Niger to contribute to OpenStreetMap, a free online mapping tool. This initiative will train motivated youth in an employable skill, encourage volunteerism, and promote the active use of social media for positive outcomes.
Finalist – Cameroon: Voicing Out to Release Post Conflict Trauma
This project will use internet media to enable victims of the recurrent inter-tribal land use resources conflicts between the villages of Oku and Mbessa in the North West Region of Cameroon to expose their never considered grievances in solving the conflict. Women and children in both communities still want to have a say about the conflict management methods. They feel more relieved when someone listens to their ordeals. Their voices will be exposed through social media for a wider audience.
Finalist – Argentina: Communicating Our Indigenous Peasant Assembly
Provide training and equipping to the communicator team of the Asamblea Campesina Indígena del Norte Argentino-ACINA, to generate contents, that promotes exchange experiences and participation of our communities in defense of the food sovereignty, right to land and life in our territories. Using the Internet and social networks, we want to talk our struggles and proposals, sensitize at society and mobilize more youth in our communities.
Finalist – Brazil: Building the Oral History of Brasilândia
Brasilândia, a slum in São Paulo, is known for it's extreme poverty and scarcity of resources. We want to develop an oral history and affective map of the neighborhood. A youth group will use the community's Radio station and invite residents to talk about their lives. This will all be recorded on a blog and podcast and compiled into a digital book and shared with the community.
Finalist – Bolivia: Jovenes de Uspha-Uspha
The project aims to establish an online network for the community Uspha-Uspha. Initially it will be used to promote activities led by youths from the community within the sports and arts program of Proyecto Horizonte. This program is one of our most popular activities, primarily aiming to reduce social insecurity issues such as gang related violence and crime. In time we aim to establish a digital photo/video and story-telling forum where the community can share information about upcoming and past activities, life in Uspha-Uspha and to connect and interact with other communities worldwide.
Finalist – Colombia: Traditional Knowledge for Sustainable Development – Colombian Amazon
The initiative is focused on the preservation of Traditional Indigenous Ecological Knowledge (TIEK), and to use it effectively in promoting directly sustainable land use of the riverine landscape – a place where the floodplain forests, fishes, and fertile soils have sustained local people for generations. This microgrant perfectly fits in to facilitate a training in digital media to amplify the use of TIEK in community-based ecotourism and to promote their sustainable entrepreneurship online. After the training, the people and youngsters are guided and learn by doing throughout the project.
Finalist – Brazil: Our Rivers Speak (ORS)
Young artist-leaders of Cabelo Seco, an afro-indigenous community that lies between the dying Rivers Tocantins and Itacaiunas, gateway to the Amazon, refused last month to perform on any stage funded by the mining giant VALE to buy ethical credibility. The youth will broadcast their stories & living culture, to explain to other communities, schools and leaders, locally, nationally and internationally, why the preservation & independent production of their own culture is essential to sustaining global eco-systems threatened by the industrialization of this essential and rich Amazonian region.
