Five Days Left for $5 Million

This week's newsletter has been a long time coming. Let's get straight down to business – we are just five days away from the deadline (November 1) for this year's Knight News Challenge. Each year the Knight Foundation gives away $5 million to support innovative uses of technology to help strengthen local communities. Last year's winners include a voicemail citizen media project in Zimbabwe, a cell-phone news gathering initiative in a South African township, and a massive video blogging project in rural India. Clearly the Knight Foundation is committed to funding international projects and this is a wonderful opportunity for the Rising Voices community to extend online participation into communities that have long been ignored.

Make sure to read the Frequently Asked Questions page. You can apply here.

Rising Voices: The World's Best Weblog

Get this: some kind soul nominated Rising Voices as the Best Weblog (in the world!) for this year's BOB's contest. (That stands for Best of Blogs.) I am sure that many of you are aware that there are almost as many blog awards as there are blogs, but the BOBs contest has long been the most recognized internationally. We are tremendously proud to be listed among such fine company as Generación Y and Scienceblogs.de. You can cast your votes here and view the results here.

Social Unrest in Bolivia; New Blogs in Nakuru and Romania

It's no wonder that Rising Voices was nominated with all the great content that has been published recently. Rezwan looks at the recent social unrest in Bolivia as through the eyes of Voces Bolivianas’ bloggers. And get to know the new bloggers in Nakuru, Kenya from the REPACTED project and in Romania from the Blogging the Dream project.

80plus1 Deadline on October 31

Finally, for all you creative minds, the deadline to submit proposals to the 80plus1 project, which will try to connect select sites and themes around the world to Linz, Austria, the 2009 cultural capital of Europe. More information is available on their website.

That's all for this week.

All the best,

David

Dear All,

Deadlines are fast approaching for the October bonanza of funding for citizen media and digital education projects. These are great opportunities for anyone who has applied for Rising Voices grants in the past and for everyone who has a project they want to see carried out.

Project:Report – Deadline Oct. 5

The first video, due by October 5, should be a profile of a person you think the world should know about. The video can run no longer than 3 minutes and must be in English or have English subtitles. ENTRIES MUST BE IN BY OCTOBER 5 TO HAVE A CHANCE AT THE GRAND PRIZE – a $10,000 journalism fellowship with the Pulitzer Center to report on a story abroad.

Digital Media and Learning Competition – Deadline Oct. 15

The 2008 Digital Media and Learning Competition theme is Participatory Learning. Participatory Learning includes the many ways that learners (of any age) use new technologies to participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment upon one another's projects, and plan, design, advance, implement, or simply discuss their goals and ideas together.

Google's Project 10 to the 100th – Deadline Oct. 20

Google is committing $10 million to implement five final projects, with the goal of helping as many people as possible. Submissions can be supplemented with 30 second videos.

Knight News Challenge – Deadline Nov. 1

The Knight Foundation is giving away around $5 million this year to support ideas that “improve local online news, deepen community engagement, bring Web 2.0 tools to local neighborhoods, develop publishing platforms and standards to support local conversations or innovate how we visualize, experience or interact with information.” There are three rules to follow to apply to the 2008-09 Knight News Challenge: 1.) Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base. 2.) Serve the public interest. 3.) Benefit one or more specific geographic communities.

************

Meanwhile, the Rising Voices grantees keep pushing on. Head to the Rising Voices website for videos of new bloggers from the South African township of Kwa Mashu, updates from the student and teacher blogs in Uruguay, and one-year reflections from Voces Bolivianas and Neighbourhood Diaries.

And, of course, have a wonderful weekend.

Best,

David