Global Voices

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Blogging Positively - Live chat on NOW!
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Instructions:
Go to the chat room select “English” and then press “Next”. We will create other chat rooms for other languages if the opportunity arises.

In commemoration of World AIDS Day Rising Voices will be hosting a live chat. This chat aims to build on the foundations laid by the first chat we had back in April which asked the following question: “How can citizen media be used to supplement and improve the mainstream media’s coverage of the AIDS epidemic?”

Date: Wednesday, December 3rd
Venue: http://www.worknets.org/chat/
Time: 15.00 Nairobi time:
07.00 (New York, EST) - 10.00 (Buenos Aires) - 12.00 (London, GMT) - 14.00 (Cape Town, Beirut) - 15.00 (Nairobi, Moscow) - 17.30 (New Delhi) - 18.00 (Beijing, Manila) - 21.00 (Tokyo) - 23.00 (Sydney)
Login instructions: Login using your name and then select the room you want to join by clicking enter. Once in the room, select a font colour on the left side of the screen, then join the chat.
Chat Facilitators: Serina and Daudi

This weeks chat will start out focusing on two Rising Voices grantee projects, REPACTED in Nakuru, Kenya and AIDS Rights Congo based in Brazzaville. We will learn how both organizations have implemented blogging and video outreach programs to spread awareness about their initiatives in AIDS prevention and advocating for the rights of HIV-positive individuals.

Other discussion topics include: What are the factors to weigh when HIV-positive bloggers go public about their status? How can blogging support networks form online? What about online forums? What are other new media tools, such as mapping mashups, that can be used effectively?

If there are other topics that you would like to discuss during the chat, please respond with your ideas. I hope that as many of you as possible can make it.

David Sasaki of Rising Voices writes:

As a primer to the conversation I encourage you all to take a look at a recent post written by Juliana Rincón on Global Voices about AIDS awareness through video. Especially fascinating is a video podcast produced by QAFBeijing, which interviews South African grand justice Edwin Cameron, the country’s only government official who has gone public about his HIV status.

I will be sending out a reminder email on Tuesday with a link to a video of a fascinating conversation among the members of the Breaking the Silence in Kwa Mashu project about the fear of discussing HIV status in their community.

Check out Global Voices’ World AIDS Day 2008 coverage.

Blogging Positively - see you there Wed 3rd December.


National Aids Control Council of Kenya
Pamoja tuangamize ukimwi

Date: Today, Friday April 18th 2008
Time: 1400 GMT, 1700 Nairobi, 1600 Sweden, San Francisco 0700, New York 1000, New Delhi 1930
Venue: http://irc2.globalvoicesonline.org/chat/irc.cgi

This afternoon, I am talking part in and helping host a Rising Voices chat on the HIV/AIDS and Citizen Media, to which you are all invited. The main chat host is Serina (Kipepeo Nyeusi). Rising Voices is the outreach arm of Global Voices. Rising Voices aims to extend the benefits and reach of citizen media by connecting online media activists around the world and supporting their best ideas.

Recently Kenya has made big strides in the fight against HIV/AIDS for example in 2006 the estimated adult HIV prevalence rate was 5.!% down from a peak of 9% in 1997/1998. The number of annual deaths from HIV/AIDS in Kenya has dropped from a peak of 120,000 in 2003 to 85,000 in 2006. ART programmes have averted about 57,000 deaths since 2001.
However the still much to do and 85,000 people is a lot of people.

(Figures from National HIV Prevalence in Kenya written by The National Aids Control Council and STD Control Programme. Nairobi, Kenya June 2007.)

What can we as bloggers/readers of blogs/generators and users of citizen media do to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS? As they saying goes, we may not all be infected but we are all affected. Please note the examples I give are from Kenya as that is the country I know best, but this chat is open to everybody and I see from the Rising Voices email list that some of our brothers and sisters in Latin America will be joining us which is brilliant. This chat is open to all!
Please join us today at: 14.00 GMT for our online chat.

Date: Today, Friday April 18th 2008
Time: 1400 GMT, 1700 Nairobi, 1600 Sweden, San Francisco 0700, New York 1000, New Delhi 1930
Venue: http://irc2.globalvoicesonline.org/chat/irc.cgi

HIV/AIDS & Citizen Media: Proposed Agenda:

  • Organization Involvement – What we hear, what we see, how we perceive it
  • Importance of Citizen Media
    • How can we ensure we focus on stories that main stream media avoids?
    • How do we ensure that we focus on the human element of the story?
    • Should our main role be telling the story or empowering those affected to use the tools we are using to tell their stories direct?
    • What can we learn from others experiences on different parts of the planet?
  • Technicalities / Technical challenges
    • How do we select whom to approach to case studies for the project?
    • How do we approach those we select?
    • How do we deal with possible initial suspicion?
    • How do we deal with language barriers?
    • What computing tools are available?
    • How can we best utilise these tools?
    • Do these tools have any cost implications?
  • Legal Issues
    • What steps will we take to ensure we have consent from third parties documented?
    • Will material be covered by copyright?
    • If so who will own the copyright?

See you there!


Global Voices Advocacy

I have joined the Global Voices Advocacy team as one of the sub-Saharan reporters in their network of bloggers and online activists throughout the developing world that is dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.


Global Voices: The World is Talking, Are You Listening?

I have also joined Global Voices as one of the sub-Saharan reporters. My focus on Global Voices will be to highlight blogs, bloggers and blogposts which cover any human rights issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In effect I am a foot solider under the joint command of two of the most engaging bloggers out there, Sami, Head of Advocacy at Global Voices, and Ndesanjo, the Sub-Saharan editor at Global Voices!

Global Voices Advocacy
seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists throughout the developing world that is dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online. The aim of this network is to raise the awareness of online freedom of speech issues and to share tools and tactics with activists and bloggers facing similar situations in different parts of the globe. The network is meant not only to provide support to its members, but also to produce educational guides about anonymous blogging, anti-censorship campaigns, and online organizing. By collaborating with software developers, activists, and bloggers, the network hopes to design new and more appropriate tools to protect our rights on the Internet.

Global Voices aims to

  1. Call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens’ media around the world by linking to text, photos, podcasts, video and other forms of grassroots citizens’ media being produced by people around the world.
  2. Facilitate the emergence of new citizens’ voices through training, online tutorials, and publicizing the ways in which open-source and free tools can be used safely by people around the world to express themselves.
  3. Advocate for freedom of expression around the world and to protect the rights of citizen journalists to report on events and opinions without fear of censorship or persecution.

If you come across or know of any blogger, blog, blogpost I should be aware of please let me know, I will be very grateful.

If you are interested in writing a regular round-up of Kenyan blogs for Global Voices, following in the footsteps of brilliant pioneers such as Mshairi and Afromusing, please get in touch with Ndesanjo.