Proposals from April, 2013
Finalist – Myanmar (Burma): Collab Space for CJs
Despite extremely low Internet penetration rate, more Myanmar people are starting to use social networks and become “netizens”. However, limited knowledge on privacy and access to network, especially in smaller towns, becomes a barrier for them to tell their stories to the whole country or to the world. And with all those violences happening now, only a few of those who could access Internet are influencing the country's online community. We aim to have more ethical citizen journalists in the country who could share their stories to a broader network on a timely manner.
Finalist – Honduras: Good News Blog
The Good News Blog's objective is to inspire young people who are going through a desperate and uncertain period. Inspiring interviews, mentorships and images can be used as a reference and knowledge can be shared among interviewees supporting their own life development. The plan is to interview persons without titles or college degrees but who have fulfilled their life goals and dreams with hard work and effort, like entrepreneurs, store and auto-shop owners, or salesmen.
Finalist – India: Strengthening Human Rights Defenders in Women Rights Monitoring
Human rights defenders (HRDs) already engaged in monitoring violations of rights of women belonging to adivasis, dalits and minority communities in Odisha will be trained to use mobiles handsets to take photographs, record oral statements of victims and others, keep the data in a computer at a safe place, transfer it to concerned bodies for filing complaints to human rights commissions to ensure justice to victims. One Training will be organized to capacitate 30 HRDs of Odisha. 5 HRDs will be provided with necessary hand-holding supports to monitor women rights violations in a better manner.
Finalist – Kenya: Girls Community Digital Desk
This project is aimed at promoting the voices of young girls born with HIV through online media. The project will train 20 young girls between the age of 10-19 years on leadership skills and basic journalism skills. The girls will then take lead in writing their own stories to inspire, and advocate for their rights through social media. Their stories will be published on a common blog that the girls themselves will be in charge of updating. The stories will capture various issues at the community level which affects the girls either directly or indirectly.
Finalist – Cameroon: Questioning Public Authorities Through Citizen Media
The project seeks to empower survivors of the 1986 Lake Nyos Gas disaster who were resettled in make shift camps and have been abandoned there without adequate shelter, food security, health and sanitation. The project trains key members of the society and equip them to be able to bring their vital voices to the global community thereby putting government to task so they can take responsibility for their action. The project would increase a sense of empowerment of survivors since the internet is a liberating force. The project would give them access to the transformative power of the internet
Finalist – Shooting Bolivia from Wikimedia Commons
Multimedia material of Bolivia within Wikimedia Commons are few. There are no images, audios or videos of historical places or towns and cities. In Bolivia, there are several groups of people interested in multimedia who share their work through social media, but these photos are not shared under a free license. The most frequent reason is that they do not know how to use these type of licenses. The idea is to contact as many of these groups throughout Bolivia and conduct training workshops and awareness to share some of their materials in Wikimedia Commons.
Finalist – Pakistan: IDPs Youth Media Project
This project will enable IDPs youth age 16-22 living in Jalozai IDPs Camp and host communities, to tell stories about themselves and their communities. By learning the documentary approach in photography, IDPs youth will create media products about their lives. Eligible IDPs youth will be identified and registered. 40 youth will be trained, while each participant will produce a piece of work; In addition, the participants will also be given a crash course on citizen journalism, allowing them to disseminate their best works through the Internet in the future.
Finalist – Greece: Citizen Journalism Against Ore Mining in Halkidiki
Radiobubble/Hackademy will train 25 residents of northern Greece on the development of citizen media. This will enable the protest movement against ore mining in Halkidiki to bypass the media blackout on issues faced by locals and to challenge the image of this struggle in corporate media, in order to inform the rest of the country of the political and financial scandal, slow-motion environmental disaster and excessive police brutality that have come to rule people's lives. The 4-day workshop will be organised around a planned rally in order to include real-life coverage of a protest event.
Finalist – Albania: Waste in My City
The project is an emergent and prevention response to survival conditions of 92% of the Roma community working and living with waste in Albania. It will encourage participation models and listening to Roma’s voice, through use of social networks like development mechanisms. Informing on social media, building the denouncing directory at Riciklimi.al; the competition with photos and blogs from Roma and for the Roma will accompany this initiative.
Finalist – Macedonia: Wild Herbs Exchange Network
Macedonia is a country with lush nature and a large number of medicinal herbs and teas. People that live in remote villages have a natural remedy for every ailment but they have very little contact with the rest of the world. We plan to educate these people on the importance in sharing this knowledge by exchange of information and cures using the internet. We will also ask young bloggers to photograph and write about these wild herbs. This way we also produce the first eco journalists in Macedonia that can speak for people from remote villages.
