1. Full name
| Victoria Tinta |
2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute
| Lingua |
3. Publication date of your latest post or translation
| Date: – 24/3/2013 |
4. Title of project
| Lingua Airwaves (Global Voices Aymara) |
5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)
| Victoria Tinta |
6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less
| Despite the publication of regular translations, traffic on the Global Voices Aymara site remains relatively quite low, and this project seeks alternative ways to reach potential monolingual and bilingual consumers of the global content offered by the site. This project will produce high-quality audio recordings of the articles posted on GV Aymara and package them as CDs or cassettes that can be distributed to the urban cities of El Alto and Puno, Peru, as well as the rural areas in the Bolivian and Peruvian Altiplano, home to the majority of the region’s Aymara speakers. By working with an existing partner, San Gabriel Radio that will assist us produce these pieces and find ways to broadcast on the air as part of this collaboration, we will address the fact that many mono-lingual Aymara speakers have lower rates of literacy and very little access to the internet. However, by providing this service over the airwaves and on recorded materials, they can be exposed to different perspectives and global news in their own language. |
7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?
| The outreach of indigenous language sites of GV Lingua is crucial to its sustained success and to ensure that the content translated can reach more people regardless of their access to the internet. This pilot project can be considered a model for other Lingua sites that may also face the reality of low traffic due to external factors such as internet accessibility. By seeing or hearing the translations produced by volunteers in other formats can also be an incentive for the volunteer translators to continue their work. |
8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?
| This project helps to build bridges between the creators of citizen media, who can now be heard by more people due to these translations and potential readers or listeners eager to learn more about the world. Being that the representation of the content found on GV in different languages, and specifically indigenous languages, a key goal of the Lingua section of GV, the project aims to explore new ways of reaching out to the target audiences of such languages. Considering the mostly negative impact that the Aymara peoples in Bolivia have experienced so far from the effects of Globalization, the project also aims to show another – positive – side of Globalization to these peoples by encouraging them to take part in the global conversation, while maintaining their native language and culture. As such, the idea is to nurture their sense of recognizing that cultural and political struggles similar to their own are taking place in other parts of the world, that is to say their sense of forming part of a global integrative community. Different means of providing feedback to the project (via text messages, Internet and others) will be integrated with the distribution of materials. |
9. What is innovative about your project?
| Being meant to serve as an experiment that over time should inspire other Lingua groups in comparable situations to implement the same mechanisms of distribution and outreach, the project takes a first step in exploring the idea of linking Internet-based media to traditional media in order to amplify the group of readers. In order to reach as many readers as possible, the means of distribution will be many-faceted and creative (handing out cassettes and/or CD’s to taxi and bus drivers, exposing the material at news stands in the cities, renting a minibus for a day to reach places off the common roads of media distribution, transmitting the audio versions on a local radio station, etc.). This entire process could be described as a reversed version of the common model of publishing traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts etc.) on the Internet, taking into account the needs of Aymara speakers, including their limited access to the Internet. In that sense, the vein of the project is democratic and inclusive, aiming to even out the inequalities in terms of access to the content of GV, which those differing conditions constitute. |
10. Which section of Global Voices would your project most benefit (if applicable)?
| Lingua |
11. How would the wider GV community utilize and/or participate in your project?
| Given the fact that the content of the proposed media is provided by GV contributors in general and the GV Aymarata translator team specifically, the link to the GV community as a whole is already established. In addition to that, through the continuous documentation of the project the idea is to inspire other groups in other countries whose situations share the main characteristics and conditions (underrepresented languages; limited internet access; illiteracy; monolingual native speakers) to implement the same means of distribution and outreach in their reality. It is also meant as an example of activism within a single GV community, and should inspire other contributors to GV around the world to take action on a local level in creative ways. |
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.
| This proposal was originally submitted by Anders Vang Nielsen from Global Voices Danish. It has been modified, but much of the original concept remains. He indicated that he cannot participate this time, but gave us his blessing to re-submit. Translators: Victor Paco, Esteban Mamani, Elias Quispe, Nelly Sosa, Rosmery Quispe, Marisol Luna, Emma Quispe, Martha Valencia, Irma Laura, Celia Saucedo. (we will determine who will be the overall coordinator of the project) Advisors: Eddie Avila and Paula Goés |
13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?
| We will work with the free and open-source software Audacity, as well as experienced radio journalists at San Gabriel Radio to help team members with broadcast and other voice-related skills. We have contacts in Puno, Peru to help us connect with radio stations and other potential audiences in that city. |
14. Describe the prospects for sustainability/continuation once the innovation grant funding ends
| Given the condition as a pilot-project, an analysis of the outcome of the project will be made once the production and distribution of materials have come to an end. The continuous documentation (blogs, field reports, photos, digital version of materials once produced) together with that analysis should serve as an experimental case for the GV community as a whole, thus – hopefully – revealing indicators of how to develop future strategies of distribution and outreach to native speakers of indigenous languages. The particular experiences made in the Bolivian context might result to be as successful as to justify an application for continuous funding on the radio (possibly through advertising), thus securing the on-going of this singular project. Team members will already know how to produce and edit material and can submit additional reports in the future. |
15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish
| Planning and initial design of material. Selection of articles to be included (May) Workshops and production of first materials (June) Distribution in El Alto and Bolivian Altiplano (July) Distribution in Puno, Peru (August) Ongoing production of materials (July – August) 2nd Round of Distribution in El Alto (September) 2nd Round and follow-up in Puno (October) Completion of first round of project (October) |
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)
| Purchase of audio recorders – 4 x $150 = $600 Workshops for production of audio pieces – $200 Purchase and burning of CDs and recording of cassettes – $400 Distribution and outreach in El Alto, the Altiplano, and Puno, Peru (rental of minibus; local transport; meals) – $600 Internet and telecommunication (for coordination) – $40/month x 6 = $240 Honorarium to radio engineer: $100 Small stipend for project coordinator $100/month x 6 = $600 Total – $2740 |