Taghinfo.am (“Tagh” means quarter in Armenian) is an existing hyperlocal news platform for Yerevan districts. The main idea of the project was to cover problems and interesting news outside of the center of Yerevan, to tell stories, which are not interesting for Mass Media, but still important for local community. As well as to train young citizen reporters. Using GV microgrants we would like to pay a special attention to the problems of the young disabled people in the urban area. We would like to train and ask them to join to our team and tell stories, based on their own experience.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Yerevan
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
Although young people with disabilities in Yerevan can’t be called completely unrepresented online, however we would like to give them access to a wider audience, offering them to become part of our team.
During the discussion of articles about problems of disabled people in our city with our citizen reporters , I thought about an idea to show what means to be disabled in Yerevan by the eyes of disabled reporters themselves. Also I would like to help young people be more competitive and start their career in journalism, as we help our reporters.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
Our citizen reporters
Kristina Poghosyan – https://www.facebook.com/kristina.kiki.poghosyan
Zara Israelyan – https://www.facebook.com/zara.israelyan
Liana Poghosyan – https://www.facebook.com/anailpoghosyan
Marine Stepanyan – https://www.facebook.com/marine.stepanyan.3
Hasmik Orbelyan – https://www.facebook.com/hasmik.orbelyan.3
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
Our team is seek to cover untold stories, as well as very local problems and stories about interesting peoples from the communities. We are going to discover specific problems which disable people facing in our city, as well as tell about new technologies and good examples when such a problems are resolved. Special attention will be payed on everyday life of the young people with health problems. Besides text stories, our team will prepare photo and video materials.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
Previously our platform revived support from different local and international organizations, such as UNDP, Eurasia Partnership Foundation Armenia, Journalists for the Future, Internews Armenia, as well as with journalism departments of universities. I plan to establish more connections with NGOs, which are working for people with disabilities.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
12-15 participants , at least half of them will be young people with disabilities
The goals of this idea are:
1. help to rise voice of the young people with disabilities
2. teach them multimedia citizen reporting skills
3. integrate them to the peers team
4. stimulate a leadership skills and give them a possibility to start a career in journalism
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
During the training we will focus on multimedia reporting skills, as well as activity in social media and what is more important for me – on media ethics.
Participants will obtain knowledge of using pocket video/photo camera, basic video/photo editing skills. As well as, they will knew how to work with data, create infographics using such online tools as infogr.am, easel.ly, google maps et.c.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
As long as we are just virtual editorial, and we have no office space yet, usually friends of our project kindly providing us with venue and equipment (computers, projector, ADSL Internet et.c.) for our training. For example, the UNDP office in Yerevan, Journalists for the Future NGO (jnews.am).
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
I have an experience to train disabled people on blogging as a part of JFF NGO project (http://deafnet.blogspot.com/). After that project our organization had a successful campaign, demanding to oblige TV companies Public TV broadcast a children's program and a news program in sign language. After which activists of the group created “The voice of silence” NGO. I think this relationship will help me in my initiative.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
Some specifics in designing course specially for this group, taking into account their needs, could be challenging. I think consultations with my colleagues could help me to overcome it.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
1. Statistics of the web pages, youtube views, as well as accounts in social networks (facebook, twitter);
2. Number of produced posts and videos;
3. Evaluations of workshop and whole project by participants;
4. Attention of city local government (during our reporting we succeed to get number of responses from municipality on articles, in some cases problems in communities even were resolved.
5. Feedback from community;
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
1st month
1. Preparation works, call for participants
2. 5 day workshop (online writing, photo and video reporting, infographics, media ethics)
3. Starting reporting
2nd – 6th months
1. Editorial meetings once a week
2. Editing and publishing 15 reporting
3. Online training on specific topic
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
Our project is designed for 6 months:
Honorarium of 15$ for 15 articles per month – 225 $ (per month)
Project manager, trainer, editor salary – 150$ (per month)
Proof-reader and moderator salary- 40$ (per month)
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
Promotion of GV would help us to enlarge audience (we are planing to engage volunteer translators to translate our articles to English and Russian).
Contact name
Gayane Mirzoyan
