Stories
Featured Blogger: Oumar Dembélé
Meet Oumar Dembélé, a primary schoolteacher in Cinzana-Gare, one of Ségou Region villages. Oumar is also one of the participants in the Rising Voices grantee project Ségou Villages Connection. In this email interview, Oumar shares the state of technology in Ségou, the needs to improve this situation, and his aspirations for the future.
Featured Blogger: Yaya Coulibaly
Yaya Coulibaly is an agronomist in Cinzana-Gare, a village located in the Ségou region. He is also a participant in the Rising Voices grantee project Ségou Villages Connection, where he has taken part in various citizen media trainings conducted, as a way to tell some of the stories of these rural communities despite many difficulties in regards to internet connectivity.
Ségou Villages: Solidarity Within the Community
The new bloggers from the Ségou Villages Connection project in Mali have been writing about solidarity amongst the residents of the rural communities. These signs of solidarity can be seen during times of celebration, as well as near tragedies. It is this solidarity that led the coordinator to start this project.
Join Us for a Discussion on Mobile Phones for Citizen Media
Rising Voices will be participating as part of an online discussion to be held July 27 - August 2, 2011 hosted by the New Tactics for Human Rights platform. The discussion will focus on "Using Mobile Phones for Citizen Media," and we'll focus our participation on the work by our grantee Ségou Villages Connection in Mali.
Twitter to Promote and Preserve Underrepresented Languages
The project Indigenous Tweets started by Kevin Scannell has been tracking and highlighting Twitter accounts that have been using the microblogging platform to promote and preserve underrepresented language communities. Currently the project is tracking more than a hundred different language groups.
Ségou Villages: Words of Advice During Storms
The RV project Ségou Villages Connection succeeded in creating a radio station using only an MP3 player and memory cards. Oumar Dembélé, one of the newest bloggers of the project writes updates on two tragedies in the Ségou villages, and provides words of advice on how to avoid future incidents.
Ségou Villages Connection: On An Outreach Tour To Villages In Mali
On the 18th of June, six members of the Ségou villages connection project hopped on in a very old mammywagon towards Dioro and its surrounding villages situated 70 kms away from the town of Ségou. The team carried a solar panel, a battery, two computers, four USB Internet connection keys, some digital cameras and a lot of luggage for the eight day long tour. The participants of the Dioro Village were taught to create email accounts and how to write stories, how to take picture and videos and how to publish posts on blogs. They were also trained how to send sms and Twitter. Read reactions of some of the participants in this feature.
Ségou Villages Connection: Mobile Internet Connecting People
Ségou Villages Connection, the Rising Voices grantee from Mali has a simple objective, linking the residents of rural villages and the larger cities of Mali using mobile phones and internet. Boukary's task is to train residents of the Ségou villages how to use their mobile phones to send news about the communities to the residents living in the capital Bamako.
Ségou Villages Connection
Boukary Konaté is a tireless advocate for greater internet connectivity and participation by rural residents of Mali. Through a variety of projects including a series of trainings in Ségou, as well as a Niger River excursion where he hacked together a mobile internet connection, he is now sharing cultural traditions from the villages of Mali through blogs and social networks.
Announcing the Newest Rising Voices Grantees
Rising Voices is pleased to announce the five newest members to join its global community of citizen media grantees. Each of the selected projects will receive microgrants to implement their proposed project to teach others how to use various citizen media tools. Please join RV in congratulating and welcoming the five projects from the countries of Guinea-Bissau, Greece, Brazil, India, and Mali.
