1. Full name
| Eddie Avila |
2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute
| GV in English |
| Rising Voices |
3. Publication date of your latest post or translation
| Date: – 25/3/2013 |
4. Title of project
| Global Voices in your Community |
5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)
| Eddie Avila |
6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less
| Leverage Global Voices’ vast network of citizen media practitioners and knowledge experts who can become mentors to emerging grassroots activists that want to work and support their local communities. Starting with the thousands of applicants to the Rising Voices microgrant applicants from around the world, we will sponsor and organize in-person and virtual meet-ups where members of the GV community can provide much needed support, advice, and mentoring, or simply make meaningful connections with these individuals and organizations that want to spread the benefits of citizen media to their own communities. The topics of these meet-ups can range from specific skills-building sessions to advice on crowdfunding to important security-related topics. |
7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?
| Rising Voices is only able to support 1% of all of the microgrant applicants through funding, and there is an existing need and interest to find alternative ways to support these communities. This personal connection can also bring these individuals and organizations closer to the GV community and be new sources of news content or excellent local resources to help bridge the participation gap and protect online expression. |
8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?
| We will help provide leadership opportunities for Global Voices members to organize in-person or virtual gatherings to support their local communities. There are still many GVers that still feel a connection to our community, but may not have the time or sustained interest to write or translate. They can host these gatherings and remain a vital part of our mission to develop new voices from underrepresented communities. |
9. What is innovative about your project?
| This project is a more active engagement of our Global Voices audience, and we go beyond publishing articles on our main site or creating guides and hoping that our audience will utilize them or share them in their networks. Now that we have a critical mass of applicants from our microgrant competitions, a goal of the microgrants has been to continue a commitment to engaging with and facilitating these projects beyond those receiving funding. This project would bring together those working in similar regions or topics, building in-person networks which in turn could strengthen digital abilities, helping them to combine resources or otherwise work together. This builds on the resource of the microgrant’s compiled list of overlapping projects. |
10. Which section of Global Voices would your project most benefit (if applicable)?
| GV in English |
| Rising Voices |
| GV Advocacy |
11. How would the wider GV community utilize and/or participate in your project?
| They would volunteer as mentors to lead discussions on Google Hangout in a variety of languages, topics, etc. or they may want to organize a local meet-up in their city of residence or in a nearby town. We will also need the wider GV community to play an active role in creating resources, such as curricula or presentations that can be used in the meet-ups or Hangouts. |
12. List the other GV community members, if any, who will be actively working on the project. Please specify what role each person will play in the development of the project.
| Prior to the Global Voices Summit, we convened a GV Outreach working group, and many of the ideas that were discussed in those conversations became the basis of this proposal. We have had several GV members who have expressed an interest in exploring these ideas even further, but no additional participation has been confirmed. |
13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?
| We would need assistance with the most effective uses and best practices for Google Hangouts. We would also need assistance to represent these gatherings on a platform, and a place to document and archive the various Hangouts and meet-ups. |
14. Describe the prospects for sustainability/continuation once the innovation grant funding ends
| We hope to establish a model for the in-person and virtual gatherings with examples of topics and presentations that any GVer could use as they see fit. The costs for in-person gatherings will depend on the size of the event, and we would help provide support for GVers that may want to crowdfund or search for in-kind donations for the meet-ups. |
15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish
| We plan to hold six in-person meetups and six Google Hangouts over the next nine months. April and May – Coordination and identification of topics/audiences June – November – 1 meetup and 1 Hangout per month December – Evaluation and next steps |
16. Provide a detailed budget of up to US$5,000 for project costs. (Please try and present as accurate a budget as possible: applicants are encouraged to submit budgets for less than the maximum amount as smaller grants allow us to fund more projects)
| However, we would like to have a small fund to help pay for travel costs, either for nearby participants (applicants from the microgrants) to travel to a town where the meet-up will be held or for the GVer to travel to a place where there is no current GV representation. These funds can also pay for modest refreshments. Six meet-ups for travel + refreshments: $300 USD/each x 6 = $1800 |
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