Project Proposal: Lingua Airwaves (Global Voices Aymara)

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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

Project Proposal: Global Voices In Your Community

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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

GV Books is branching out…

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Yes, in mid-February 2013 we opened accounts on some open access, sharing and popular platforms: the Internet Archive, Scribd, Issuu. We set up a nice profile and uploaded our two e-books in their various translations. Here below are basic statistics about reads & downloads after the first two weeks, along with some less accurate figures (for technical reasons) from the GV Books website (which received more than 500 visits since its inception on May 30, 2012).

GV Books:
– “EU in crisis” dwnlds in english: 40 pdf + 5 epub + 4 mobi
– “African Voices…” dwnlds in english: 22 pdf + 3 epub + 2 mobi

Internet Archive:
– “EU in crisis” (pdf): 11 dwnlds in english, 16 in arabic, 7 in spanish, 5 in italian, 5 in portuguese;
– “African Voices…” (pdf): 9 dwnlds in english, 7 in italian

Scribd:
– “EU in crisis”: 167 reads (+ 3 readcasts, 19 dwnlds) in english, 144 in arabic, 66 (+ 4 readcasts, 3 dwnlds) in italian, 50 (+ 1 dwnld) in portuguese, 29 (+ 1 readcast, 1 dwnld) in spanish
– “African Voices…”: 178 reads (+ 2 readcasts, 12 embed views, 1 dwnld) in english, 102 reads in italian

Issuu:
– “EU in crisis”: 7 impressions in english, 24 in arabic, 5 in italian, 3 in portuguese, 2 in spanish
– “African Voices…”: 38 in english, 4 in italian.

GV Innovation Awards – project updates and 2013 launch date!

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Roughly a year ago we launched the first round of internal innovation grants, where we asked members of the GV community to submit proposals for projects or tools that enhance Global Voices’ work or mission.

As you’ll recall, project proposals by Tomomi, Bernardo, Juan and Claire were selected, by popular vote, to receive US$5,000 in funding from GV. In the end Claire decided not to go forward with her project so did not accept the grant funds. Claire would be happy to share the information she gathered as part of her preparations for “GV Goes Mobile” with anyone who’s interested in using or building upon it.

This e-mail is to update you on the current status of the three innovation grant projects and to let you know that we’ll be launching the 2013 round of innovation grants on March 1st. So now’s a good time to start mulling over ideas for projects you might want to propose.

Stay tuned for more information on the launch, and enjoy reading the project updates below!

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Cojiro, a cross-lingual curation tool (Tomomi Sasaki)

Project Description:
Our group is working on an open-source tool, “Cojiro”, designed to enable people with complementary skill sets to identify, group and convey stories in one language to a broader audience in another language. The tool is based on the idea that in order to effectively bridge language barriers, content should only be translated if there is an audience who will actually read it. To do this, Cojiro appeals to two key user groups to narrow the focus of translation: domain experts in the source language, whose knowledge of local contexts and specific areas is essential to uncovering and grouping interesting conversations, and readers in the target language, who can evaluate which of these conversations would be of interest to foreign audiences. Closing the feedback loop between these groups would make cross-lingual sharing and collaboration a much more seamless process — and, we believe, a much more interesting and exciting one. Prototype: http://beta.cojiro.jp/ (UN/PW: guest/brain) Software codebase: https://github.com/netalab/cojiro

Progress report:
Since we received the grant we’ve spent a lot of our energy on re-defining the challenges, distilling the service concept, and translating it into an intuitive web interface. The biggest challenge has been in figuring out how to balance the specific needs of the Global Voices community versus building a multilingual platform that is valuable in other contexts. Surveying digital projects with crosslingual components and exchanging opinions with other people working on multilingual projects has been exciting and informative.

At the same time, we’ve been building on the wide variety of technical skills required to build Cojiro. The prototype was great as a proof-of-concept, but being able to launch, maintain and actively develop a robust service is a whole new ballgame. Unfortunately, our most experienced developer left the project for personal reasons and this has slowed progress. We’re still a few months away from being able to test run the service with a closed group, so this is the next big goal!

I guess that in Cojiro’s case, the completion of work would be a public launch… we’re not quite there yet. It’s been uber difficult to find someone that has a) the domain knowledge and interest b) the technical skills and c) the free time, so a second round of funds might allow us to simply hire another developer outright for a few weeks/months.

Challenges/suggestions for future grant cycles:
The application and voting process was clear and fair. It might be fun to try video applications? Have people talk it out, rather than try to string together words to capture nebulous ideas. And the GV community is so big, it would be nice to put a face to a project. Also, it might be interesting to lay out specific challenges that advance GV’s mission and have people propose a hypothesis. Some of those challenges would be to nudge the GV publishing platform itself to be innovated upon. Chris and I would really like to see other tool-based projects, and that seems like one way to open up the discussion…!

I’m not sure how the other teams fared but we fell behind on our proposed schedule fairly quickly… it would have been okay to have a few project mandated milestones to report to the community. (‘Okay’, in the sense that reporting is usually a pain but it might have helped us be more disciplined.) We were a bit sad not to get any official feedback from the Summit for Cojiro or any of the other projects, after scrambling to put together a video. In hindsight, that may have influenced our communication volume.

See more Cojiro project updates at http://innovation.globalvoicesonline.org/category/grants/cojiro/.

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GV Multimedia Publishing (Bernardo Parrella)

Project Description:
The main idea is to create a small, online, independent publishing platform by taking advantage of GV huge archive and its future production. We could select, re-package and disseminate our multimedia content according to topics, regions, issues, languages, media, etc. This platform could produce electronic books, dossier and specific publications in a variety of formats (pdf, html, odt, epub, mobipocket, etc.), containing a collection of the best posts/material, preceded by an ad hoc introduction or short essay(s) to provide the proper context. For example, we could create right away a “Global Voices 2011″ or an “Arab Spring Voices” ebooks including best posts on these topics already published on GV in several languages, enriching and adapting them accordingly. In time we can build a unique catalog focused on citizen and social media material to be distributed (under CC) on many occasions and in many venues — while also attracting new people interested in sharing their multimedia content (videos, pics, audio, etc.), on our platform.

Progress report:
After the launch of our dedicated website on May 30, GV Books (formerly known as GV Multimedia Publishing) published its first english ebook, “EU in crisis”, at the end of July, in three different formats (PDF, Mobipocket, ePub).

It was soon followed by Italian, Arabic, and Spanish editions, with Portuguese and French versions on their way — each of them in those three formats. “EU in Crisis” was a compilation of the 13 best posts from Spring 2011 to Summer 2012, selected from our special coverage on “Europe in
Crisis”, preceded by a general introduction.

In late December we published our second ebook, “African Voices of Hope and Change”. From a total of about 800 posts produced over the year about the Sub-Saharan Africa region, we hand-picked the 13 best posts and crafted a broader introduction. Given the larger scope of GV African coverage and issues, we decided to devote a specific ebook to the MENA region (scheduled for the end of January).

While I’m finding out how many times these files has actually been downloaded, our GV Books website received a total of almost 500 visits and plenty of positive feedback — even if currently we are not promoting this project beyond GVers and their extended social circles.

My plan is to push for more visibility and explore outside opportunities after we’ll have a few more original English titles, probably starting with the Internet Archive and similar non-profit venues.

A slower approach is also needed because the actual production process is more time-consuming and complicated than expected, given that our titles are not just plain text like most e-books around but require greater technical and editing attention (due to many links, pictures, language-specific issues, etc.).

The overall interest and involvement of many GVers at various level is very strong and we are definitely on the right path toward the creation of a broader e-catalog based on citizen media content.

GV Books Timeline:
– Award announcement on March 1st
– Agreement signed on March 28
– 1st installment ($ 2,500) received on May 15
– MailingList launch: April 15 (now 65 members)
– Website launch: May 30
– Ebook “EU in crisis” in english: Jul 24
> italian: Oct 24
> arabic: Nov 25
> spanish: Dec 13
> portuguese: final editing
> french: in translation
– Ebook “African voices…” in english: Dec. 19
> italian: in translation
> portuguese: in translation

See more project updates at http://innovation.globalvoicesonline.org/category/grants/multimedia-publishing/ and http://books.globalvoicesonline.org/.

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Filming Our Posts (Juan Arellano)

Project Description:
The main idea is to create a small, online, independent publishing platform by taking advantage of GV huge archive and its future production. We could select, re-package and disseminate our multimedia content according to topics, regions, issues, languages, media, etc. This platform could produce electronic books, dossier and specific publications in a variety of formats (pdf, html, odt, epub, mobipocket, etc.), containing a collection of the best posts/material, preceded by an ad hoc introduction or short essay(s) to provide the proper context. For example, we could create right away a “Global Voices 2011″ or an “Arab Spring Voices” ebooks including best posts on these topics already published on GV in several languages, enriching and adapting them accordingly. In time we can build a unique catalog focused on citizen and social media material to be distributed (under CC) on many occasions and in many venues — while also attracting new people interested in sharing their multimedia content (videos, pics, audio, etc.), on our platform.

Progress report:
Due to some internal problems the project has had a low progress in 2012. Although we had the first video finished in july (for Summit) it was just in october that we could pay the video producer and upload the video in our own account.

A little update here: http://innovation.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/11/update-on-the-video-project/
We are now coordinating with various video producers. Some of of this coordinations come from december 2012.

Perú – A video on Lima city activists working on the historical heritage of the city. In production (The video producer is with a medical leave until this weekend, he had a surgery last days of december)
Bolivia – One video about Tipnis march in production
México – A video with Article19 on how to work on the dangers activits are because of the violence.(script on drafts)
Ecuador – We are waiting for the script to approve it. The subject will be the impact of #loxaesmas as a civic project.
Paraguay – Waiting response from one suggested producer. Also coordinating with others producers from Ecuador, and México.

A coordination session with Cati Restrepo to see the launch of the contest has been scheduled.

Challenges:
– (Internal challenge) The budget approval and other little administrative details took a bit more than expected and resulted in a delay in the start of the project.
– To find video independent producers has proved more complicated than expected. We found small enterprises engaged in video production and they were interested in the project but our established production budget was not enough for them.
– Captioning the videos didn’t went as fast as planned, but with the subtitlers community growing, we hope this delay will not recur again.
– The budget did not consider the banking cost of sending money to the producers, this will have to be coordinated with the administration.

Goals for the rest of the project:
– We have to work at becoming better known as project to attract more people engaged in the video production.
– Making any of the videos skip to mainstream media.
– Work with some ot he producers with the objective that some of the videos be done under a transmedia storytelling perspective.

See more project updates at http://innovation.globalvoicesonline.org/category/grants/filming-our-posts/

New e-book published!

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As promised, on December 19, 2012, we launched our second e-book: “African voices of hope and change: a collection of 13 best posts (plus an original & broad introduction) from 2012 GV coverage of Sub-Saharan countries. It turned out a lovely and collaborative project indeed! Also underway is the Portuguese edition of our first e-book (EU in crisis), after the Italian, Arabic and Spanish versions — French will follow soon.

“GV Books” is happily growing!

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Indeed: thanks to a broader community effort, our first ebook, EU in Crisis, in now available also in Italian and in Arabic — in the usual three formats (PDF, mobipocket, ePub). The Spanish version is coming soon, while Portuguese and French translators are quickly catching up.

In early December we plan to release our second English ebook: “African voices of hope and change” — keep an eye on our dedicated GV Books website. Muchas gracias everybody for making this project flourish!

Update on the video project

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With the appropriate apologies for not updating in months on this project, let me inform you. The most striking is that our first video has already been published, with English subtitles and everything, and it was part of a post on Global Voices in Spanish: Colombia: The “Lleras Law” and Content Creation

We are also pleased to announce that we have a blog: VideoActivo, where we are starting to post on topics related to video, such as advices, tips, contests and of course, our own videos also have a place there.

Additionally, we have created a YouTube channel, a Twitter account and a Facebook page. With all these tools we hope to bring together a community of people working with video in the region. More soon!

Actualización sobre el proyecto de videos

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Con las disculpas del caso por no haber actualizado en meses acerca de este proyecto, paso a informarles. Lo más saltante es que nuestro primer video ya fue publicado, con subtítulos en inglés y todo, y fue parte de un post de Global Voices en español: Colombia: La Ley Lleras y la creación de contenido.

También nos place comunicarles que ya tenemos blog: VideoActivo, donde estamos empezando a postear sobre temas relacionados al video, tales como consejos, tips, convocatorias a concursos y claro, nuestros propios videos también tienen un lugar ahí.

Adicionalmente hemos creado un canal en YouTube, una cuenta en Twitter y una página en Facebook. Con todas estas herramientas esperamos reunir una comunidad de gente que trabaje con el video en la región.

“EU in crisis” ebook ready!

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Another update to let everybody know that the Global Voices first e-book is ready (since early August 2012): EU in crisis, a collection of best material hand-picked from the on-going special coverage provided by our International team of dedicated citizen-reporters. Now you can download our ebook it in three different formats:

– PDF (3,2 MB)
– ePub (3,2 MB)
– Mobipocket (2,8 MB)

More details on our GV Books webspace, which is the final development of the initial “GV multimedia publishing project” supported by this GV Innovation Awards. See you there!