Welcome to the Global Voices Podcast. In this edition you'll hear more from the the Global Voices Summit which took place in Nairobi, Kenya, back in July.

The Summit is a meeting of minds, friends, new acquaintances and public participation. Many of our authors, editors and content gatherers only get to meet in person once every two years, when the Summit takes place. You can find out more about the Summit by checking the Twitter hashtag #GV2012 and by taking a look at the dedicated Summit pages.

As well as being a gathering for the public, Global Voices authors and editors to all meet and discuss their ideas, selected academics from around the world were also invited to share their knowledge and learn from the community.

Ivan Sigal is the executive director of Global Voices and he describes why it was important for the academic group to join in at the event.

There were many sessions discussing processes and methods of highlighting under-represented voices and making the most of citizen media tools that are the everyday methods of the Global Voices community. We also asked a selection of academics about their thoughts and experiences of the Summit to find out what they learned and what knowledge they might return to their work with.

Origins and futures

Of course Global Voices sprang from academia and also present at the Summit was Rebecca MacKinnon, the co-founder of the organisation, who is also an author as well as a senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank where she works on Internet policy issues. We caught up with her to talk about the future of the Internet and what it means for freedom of communication.

Global Voices would be nothing without its contributors. So to round up our coverage of the Summit for the podcast, enjoy some closing thoughts and experiences from the authors, translators and editors who create this extraordinary source of news and information.

The Global Voices 2012 Summit location.

Thank you to all of our podcast contributors, the Summit event organisers and to you for listening.

The Global Voices Podcast. The world is talking. I hope you've been listening.

Written by Jamillah Knowles · Translated by webmaster · View original post [en] · comments (0)
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The 2012 Rising Voices microgrant competition attracted plenty of interest from the East African countries of Uganda and Kenya. Rising Voices has had previous experience with grantees from this part of the world, as the magnet theater group Repacted from Nakuru, Kenya was part of the first class of grantees in 2007. They trained members of their organization how to use citizen media to showcase their work, which uses the arts for prevention efforts and to raise awareness about health issues such as HIV/AIDS and TB affecting their local community. We were able to reconnect with our alumnus project, when Repacted members recently performed at the Global Voices Summit held in Nairobi in July 2012.

Repacted Dance team. Photo by Rezwan and used under CC BY-ND 2.0

Since the Summit was held for the first time on the African continent, we hoped to find a way to better engage some of the hundreds of applicants that we were unable to fund, but whom hold a lot of potential to implement their citizen media outreach project.

For the first time in our history of GV Summits, we were able to offer travel scholarships including a free registration to previous applicants to the microgrant competition. This opportunity was open to all Kenyan and Ugandan applicants from the past two years, who submitted a short essay explaining why they wish to attend the Summit and how they would benefit from the opportunity. Again, the response was overwhelming, but we were able to offer five travel scholarships to individuals that have been able to implement part of their original project proposal.

The winners of these travel scholarships to the GV Summit were:

• Grace Atuhaire (Kampala, Uganda) has been working with Earlylife Radio to create an online platform to encourage citizen journalism. Through a partnership with the Bavukuka Foundation, they created an online media hub called “Read my Lips,” which hosts online dialogues and debates about local and regional issues.
• Wakibu Bunnya (Kampala, Uganda) has been working with the Women Vibes Program, which includes a citizen media training component for 12 young women in the Bwaise slums of Kampala. These women recently took part in a citizen journalism training program, where they learned how to report and tell their own stories using digital media.
• Freddy Kamakei Sangiriaki (Narok, Kenya) has been working with the local project Neighbour's Peace Initiative that aims to use an SMS platform and social media to engage in peace-building campaigns.
• Milton Aineruhanga (Kampala, Uganda) works with the Women of Uganda Network (Wougnet), which opened its training center in April 2012. This center provides internet access to its members and will be the central meeting place for a series of digital media training workshops. To see a photo album of the training center, please visit this Facebook album.
• Thomas Bwire (Nairobi, Kenya) works with a local organization known as Uweza Aid Foundation. He also has been collaborating with the Uweza youth journalism club in Kibera, which provides skills-building workshops in research, writing, photography, and blogging. The plan is for the youth to create their own blog (coming soon), which will provide them with a platform to express themselves.

The scholarship winners attended both days of the Summit, and had a chance to interact with members of the GV community, as well as other bloggers from around the world. There was also an opportunity to meet with other scholarship winners and learn about their projects. The scholarship winners shared with Rising Voices their reflections on their experience through emails or through posts on their personal blogs:

Wakibu Bunnya at the GV Summit. Photo by Bunnya.

For example, Wakibu from Kampala was able to connect with the other scholarship winners from Uganda in order to plan future activities. He wrote in an email to RV:

I have had a chat with the entire Uganda delegation to the summit and they are interested in starting up a National movement of bloggers and citizen media activists. we want to start by undertaking research about existing blogger movements in the country. We will keep you posted.

We'll continue to monitor these citizen media initiatives in Kenya and Uganda, and we hope that their experience at the GV Summit can be an inspiration for helping their local communities use citizen media to join the global conversation.

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Welcome to the Global Voices podcast. What is the future of online citizen media? In this edition (and the next) you will hear from editors, authors, co-founders and other participants at the 2012 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Nairobi to discuss the future of how we all work together online.

The Global Voices Summit takes place every two years and there are many topics on the agenda, possibly too many to fit into one podcast but certainly a lot of food for thought right here.

First, let's go way back, a long time in internet years and consider the origins of that thing we call Global Voices. Co-founder Ethan Zuckerman explains how Global Voices came to be, what happens at the Summits, and what he thinks the future holds.

The #GV2012 Summit is a place to meet and find out more about our authors, editors and contributors who travelled from all corners of the world. Everyone was excited, but one of the most thrilled participants was Elaine Díaz from Havana, Cuba. Here she explains a little more about citizens online in Cuba.

It wouldn’t be a Global Voices gathering without smart and vocal people from around the world. Andrea Arzaba is a journalist in Mexico and she collected some observations of the event, starting with her own reflections.

Daudi Were is a Kenyan blogger who writes on Mentalacrobatics. He was also the very entertaining MC during the public Summit meeting attended by 300 people. He explained his connection with Global Voices and how Kenyan technology continues to innovate, particularly in the area of mobile.

A group photo from the Global Voices Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.

The impact of citizen media

Through Global Voices, many people who are sometimes overlooked are able to have their views and reports amplified.

Leila Nashawati Rego is a Spanish and Syrian human rights activist. She teaches communications at Carlos the Third University in Spain as well as write for a number of respected outlets. We discussed the growth of online citizen media and the results of that expansion.

So long, but not goodbye

Some bitter-sweet news came out of the Global Voices Summit too. Sami Ben Gharbia from Tunisia told us that he is stepping down from the position of Director of Global Voices Advocacy. So, naturally it was time to take a look at the work that he has done and find out what he will be up to next.

As ever, thanks to all of our contributors, producers and music makers who help to make this happen. You can find out more about the summit by checking the Twitter hashtag #GV2012 and by taking a look at the dedicated Summit pages.

The Global Voices Podcast. The world is talking, I hope you’ve been listening.

Music credits
In the podcast you can hear lots of lovely Creative Commons music. Thanks to Mark Cotton for his fantastic creations and thanks also to all of the wonderful voice over performances and clips that help to glue the podcast together.

Written by Jamillah Knowles · Translated by webmaster · View original post [en] · comments (0)
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Today, at the biannual Global Voices Citizen Media summit, we are pleased to announce the winners of the 2nd Breaking Borders Award of $10,000 each.

The award by Google and Global Voices honors people who have made a significant impact in their communities to defend and promote freedom of speech rights on the internet. The 2012 winners were selected by the board of Global Voices, and come from two regions in the world where free speech is often threatened — North Africa and Central Europe.

This year, the award nominee projects were drawn from the extended Global Voices community around the world. Any project staffed or founded by any of the thousands of people who have contributed to Global Voices in the past was open for nomination. Our two winners are both young, volunteer organizations that are started by local communities to articulate rights, including/especially speech rights, and exemplify the kind of local activism, drive, and volunteer spirit that animates Global Voices.

In both cases, the award resources will have significant impact on their ability to make an impact.

The winners are Mamfakinch, a citizen media community in Morocco and Atlatszo.hu, an online freedom of speech defense organization in Hungary.

“Mamfakinch means “”We won't give up”" in Moroccan dialect. It was born in the wake of the street protests in Morocco. It is a website managed by a group of Moroccan young pro-democracy activists who work at aggregating, curating and disseminating citizen media material related to the grassroots movement for democratic change in Morocco. It is the first and by far the most popular citizen media portal today in Morocco. Mamfakinch has become, in less than a year, a leading citizen platform with more than a million unique visitors who have logged into its blogging platform in the past 12 months, and thousands of followers in social networking sites. It is often cited by mainstream media and its content disseminated across the Moroccan web and traditional media platforms. It has, on the other hand, sustained multiple attacks from pro-regime groups keen at silencing it.

Mamfakinch is run by volunteers who speak French and English, in addition to Arabic and Tamazight (Berber). One of its co-founders is volunteer Global Voices author Hisham Almiraat.

Website: Mamfakinch.com
Blog: 24.mamfakinch.com
witter: @Mamfakinch
Facebook page: facebook.com/Mamfakinch
Tumblr: mamfakinch.tumblr.com

Atlatszo.hu supports free speech and media rights group in Hungary. Their role is to call to account government officials who have been misusing public money and influence to push self-censorship among Hungarian journalists. Unfortunately, self-censorship is enhanced by threatening policies. Atlatszo.hu now focuses on supporting freedom of expression by pushing for better media laws and policy. They fought for the protection of journalistic sources and plan to start a legal clinic to support freedom of information requests and other legal tactics that support press freedom. Most of Atlatszo.hu's team are volunteers, including Marietta Le, a Global Voices volunteer author who covers Hungary and was formerly the editor of Global Voices in Hungarian.

Website: Atlatszo.hu/
Website in English: Atlatszo.hu/category/english/
Facebook Page: Facebook.com/atlatszo.hu
Tumblr: Atlatszo.tumblr.com
Twitter Account: @Atlatszo

Congratulations to the winners!

In 2010, the Breaking Borders Awards were won by Kubatana.net in Zimbabwe, The Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism, and Bosco in Uganda.

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300 bloggers, activists and technologists participating in the Global Voices Summit 2012 in Nairobi, Kenya have just been seated for a two-day meeting of public discussions and workshops about the rise of online citizen media movements worldwide.

Among the highlights in today's program is the opening panel on the Global Rise of Citizen Media led by Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman.

We will also be introducing Kenya citizen media, discussing the rise of #Occupy movements around the world, and exploring the influence of diaspora populations on citizen media and national public debates.

Later on, we'll be taking a closer look at social media and the Arab uprisings, the tactics employed by citizen media activists in “small” African countries to get their plight heard by the world, and ideas for how to keep endangered languages alive online.

Giants of the Internet will be a session that explores the role of global internet corporations and how citizens can hold them responsible. Google's Director of Corporate and Policy Communication, Bob Boorstin will be participating in this session.

Finally, we will be announcing the winners of the Breaking Borders Award. Two cash prizes of $10,000 will be awarded to projects from the extended Global Voices Community.

Tomorrow's program will look at privacy and free speech, internet governance, online advocacy for health initiatives including HIV/Aids, and data visualization strategies. Throughout both days of the program we will also be hosting audience led sessions and workshops (unconference-style) where participants can raise further topics.

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To compete for one of the six spots, Kenyan bloggers had to write a blog post of 500 words or less on the topic “How citizen media can help ensure peaceful elections in Kenya in 2012-13.”

Fireworks over Mombasa, Kenya (Oct, 2005) Photo by Zahir Mirza on Flickr (CC-BY-2.0)

The winners:

1. Evalyn Githina
“If we are armed with accurate information, tools and resources to amplify our outreach we can do a great deal to make sure that all citizens are well informed on the process and the issues. Knowledge is power and we need to make sure that all who want to participate do so. The more empowered the citizens are, the less likely they will be to fall for those who want to mislead them into using violence to get their voices heard.”
Read Evalyn's complete post here.

2. Kenneth Mwangi
“The mainstream media failed Kenyans during the last elections because they failed to dissolve the tension that was amongst the general population and avert the aftermath. All they did was give a handful of politicians all the airtime who in turn misused it to propagate hate and violence. Citizen media can do the exact opposite. Citizen media can tell the story from the regular people's perspective because that in my opinion is the most important side when feeling for the pulse of a nation.”
Read Kenneth's complete post here.

3. Baron Shitemi
“The beauty with blogging is that with internet enabled mobile phones, people will read from anywhere. They will discuss it wherever. Those in social media will share to their friends and followers. The networking it creates is formidable. It has an incomparable opportunity to create and sustain change.”
Read Baron's complete post here.

4. Moses Wasamu
“Citizen media can play an effective role in ensuring we have peaceful elections because of the fact that they understand better the terrain where they live, unlike the mainstream journalist who is being send to a far away station for the first time to cover the elections. They are also well known to people in their locality.”
Read Moses'complete post here.

5. Steve Banner
“In informal settlements and slums such as Kibera, where the post Election Violence was at it’s peak, the rise of Citizen journalism has helped in information gathering and sharing. Hence becoming a vital tool to spread the message of peace among the youths, who are mostly the target by politicians in carrying out negative vices and violence in the community.”
Read Steve's complete post here.

6. Ephraim Kenyanito
“While many Kenyans are unsure of whether there will be peace during Kenya’s elections of 2012-13, it seems that the online community is trying to encourage the citizen media to play a proactive role in encouraging peaceful elections and not just reporting on the outcome of the elections.”
Download Ephraim's complete post here.

The competition was judged by GV Sub Saharan Africa Editor Ndesanjo Macha, Kenyan Blogs Webring Founder Daudi Were, and GV Managing Editor Solana Larsen. Congratulations! And thanks to everyone who participated.

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Beyond the usual suspects

Unlike most tourist guides, in this file you'll find some citizen media terms and expressions to get you acquainted with Swahili blogging terms.

The Guide was built collaboratively with the helping hands of Deogratias, Njeri, Ndesanjo, Ika, Christian, Collins, Thalia and Luis Henrique.

Print it or download it to your devices. Works fine as flight entertainment!

Kwa heri**. See you soon!

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Global Voices, the international citizen media network, will be holding the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2012 in Nairobi on July 2-3, 2012. Bloggers, techies and activists from over 60 countries will participate in the event, which will take place at the PrideInn Raphta Road in Westlands.

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Global Voices will support up to four individuals selected through this open call process.

The purpose of this event is to introduce people within the academic community who study citizen media with a very active community of practitioners, who perhaps a function as a microcosm of citizen media more broadly. On the Summit site you'll find background information on previous Summits and the goals of the meeting.

We are looking for academics with a variety of perspectives and approaches, who can move beyond the polarized and rather simplistic conversations on the question of citizen media that so often find in mainstream media. We're hoping to approach the subject with an awareness and focus on a variety of different media environments - different countries, languages, access concerns, regulatory environments, and censorship.

The workshop will not require formal presentations of papers, but will be focused on intensive discussion of the issues, together with engagement with citizen media activists and practitioners from around the world.

We are expecting around 20 participants overall from a variety of disciplines and regional expertise. The public meeting will have roughly 300 participants.

There will also be opportunities for people to observe or participate in some of our internal events.

If you would like to be part of this summit, please send us a short (1-2 paragraph) description of your work and why you’d like to attend along with a CV to “zeynep at unc dot edu” and “ivan.sigal at gmail dot com” by 5 PM EST, May 23nd. We will be finalizing the list of participants by the end of that week.

A 24-hour open air library in Halle, Germany - 2008. By Gynti_46 on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

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The main conference theme is “The Global Rise of Online Citizen Media.” We wish to examine how social media has become such a powerful force for change around the world. Was it deliberate or accidental, what are the new opportunities, and where will we go next?

We speak to global bloggers, activists and scholars who have innovated in this field since the first blogs were created.

The program consists of a combination of panels in the morning hours, and “unconference” sessions in the afternoon. This means that participants will be invited to host workshops and sessions about the topics that interest them most, while other participants are free to wander and learn.

A number of the sessions on the program deal with freedom of expression, censorship, and how to engage citizens in decisions about the corporate and government structures of the internet. We also discuss indigenous language preservation, important stories that go unreported in global news, and practical advice for network building in Africa and in the Middle East.

If you have suggestions for the program, we'd love to hear them. Our preliminary program still has some room for fresh ideas. Otherwise, we'll surely hear from you during the open agenda sessions!

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