Category Archives: Project Proposal

Project proposal: The Global Voices Journal for Citizen Media

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1. Full name
Débora Maria Moura Medeiros
2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute
Lingua
3. Publication date of your latest post or translation
Date: – 13/3/2013
4. Title of project
The Global Voices Journal for Citizen Media
5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)
Débora Medeiros and Elisa Thiago
6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less
This project proposes the creation of a multilingual, multicultural journal to which scholars and researchers whose work focuses on citizen media can converge. In a spirit similar to that of Global Voices, The Global Voices Journal for Citizen Media aims at being a platform for scholars and researchers everywhere, thus accepting articles written in all languages available in our Lingua sites. Housed in the same platform, the idea is that the journal will benefit from Global Voices’s identity and that it will interact with its body of volunteer authors, translators and activists, as well as with its readership, in such a way as to become a gain for all. The journal will make use of a renewed selection methodology, based on the choices made through voting, with the aim of establishing those articles that will be translated in their entirety so as to be included in the journal. With two editions per year, The Global Voices Journal for Citizen Media would be hosted on Global Voices’s servers, with an intuitive layout based on WordPress, where all editions would be made available.
7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?
The need to secure a journal engaged specifically with the topics related to citizen media; the need to familiarize our Global Voices audience with the academic production on citizen media and, conversely, introduce a wider scholarly public to the existing Global Voices websites, thus strengthening the bonds established with the academic community during the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2012.
8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?
In the same spirit of Global Voices, which aims at amplifying the voices of underrepresented people everywhere, The Global Voices Journal for Citizen Media would decentralize the flow of information by showcasing the work done by researchers not only in the main knowledge centers, but also in the developing nations, thus working as a bridge between scholars all over the world.
9. What is innovative about your project?
The project is innovative in the way it proposes to introduce a process of collaborative selection of articles to be published, with a direct choice from our readers and community members. It is also innovative in the way it would encourage the open access culture among scholars, as well as an increase in language diversity in the academic world.
10. Which section of Global Voices would your project most benefit (if applicable)?
All sections should benefit from the project since its ultimate goal is to improve the quality of GV’s ongoing conversation as regards the themes related to citizen media – which is, after all, the focus of the work GV does.
11. How would the wider GV community utilize and/or participate in your project?
The journal would introduce GV readers, as well as GV volunteer authors, translators and activists, to the academic production on citizen media thus stimulating a broader and more productive debate within the community as a whole.
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.
At the moment, the only people we rely on, as volunteers who will surely be involved with the creation and maintenance of the journal are its proponents: Débora Medeiros and Elisa S Thiago. Both proponents would take part in the process of establishing the journal and on administrative tasks, as well as observe the selection process and help with the publishing process at each new edition.
13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?
The journal would require at least one senior academic expert in the field of citizen media, something essential, especially for a new journal. Similarly, the journal would welcome volunteers to carry out the following functions, (based on the manual available on http://www.doaj.org/bpguide/): Chief Editor, Associate Editor, Editorial Assistant, Managing Editor, Production Editor (requires solid IT skills), Layout Editor, Typesetter, Technical support person, Marketer (this might be a role that several or all members of the team share). These functions could all be shared among volunteers on the basis of a common, shared working agenda. All members of the GV community that feel they could fill one of these positions or bring new perspectives to the project are welcome to join us!
14. Describe the prospects for sustainability/continuation once the innovation grant funding ends
There should be an effort on the part of GV, and before the grant is fully spent and comes to an end, towards finding other means of financial source to sustain the journal into the future. This financial source could be sought among the regular GV supporters – or others – , a NGO or entrepreneurial initiative which would see in the journal a relevant achievement for their own practices.
15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish
Semester 1: Creation of the website and of the technical infrastructure (OJS platform) for publishing the first edition; registering the journal with entities such as ISSN. Semester 2: First call for papers, selection process of the articles for the first edition, translation of articles in other languages than English among Lingua volunteers, publishing the first edition (with articles in their original idioms and English) at the end of semester 2, with subsequent promotion of the journal in other academic and non-academic platforms. Semester 3: Evaluation of the first edition, improvements, call for papers for the second edition, selection process of the articles for the second edition, translation of articles in other languages than English among Lingua volunteers, publishing the second edition (with articles in their original idioms and English) at the end of semester 3, with subsequent promotion of the journal in other academic and non-academic platforms. Semester 4: Call for papers for the third edition, followed by the same process involved in the production, publishing and promotion of the previous two editions. With just one more year of budget assured by the grant, the journal will start to reach out to new partnerships and financial alternatives for the following years.
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)
The guide “Starting an Open Access Journal: a step-by-step guide” (https://www.martineve.com/2012/07/10/starting-an-open-access-journal-a-step-by-step-guide-part-1/) describes the following yearly costs: • Web hosting: $60/year (in case the journal cannot be hosted on GV’s servers) • DOI numbers/CrossRef membership: $275/year. Alternatively, it is possible to join the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and get CrossRef membership included in their fee of €75/year (including 50 DOI numbers) • Staff work to set up the journal; • Administrative work to keep the journal running: management of the publication system, technical support, networking and publicizing of the journal in academic and non-academic circles. These costs should be multiplied by three, in order to ensure a three-year budget for the journal, sufficient not only for its creation but also for its maintenance, while other funding alternatives for the subsequent period are considered.

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

We’re pleased to announce the four winners!

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Georgia said:

We’re pleased to announce that the four winners of the first round of the GV Innovation Awards are as follows:

  • GV Multimedia Publishing (Bernardo Parrella) – 3.57 points
  • GV Goes Mobile (Claire Ulrich) – 3.58 points
  • GV—Filming our posts (Juan Arellano) – 3.77 points
  • Cojiro, a cross-lingual curation tool (Tomomi Sasaki) – 3.98

Please note that according to the method used to rank projects, a lower rating average = a more favourable response.

Congratulations to the winners and a big thank you to all who submitted proposals and to the 114 GV community members who voted! We shall soon be contacting the winners to refine and discuss project plans and budgets.

Project proposal: GV goes mobile

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1. Full name

Claire Ulrich

2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute

GV in English
Lingua
Rising Voices

3. Publication date of your latest post or translation

Date: – 29/1/2012

4. Title of project

GV goes mobile

5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)

Claire Ulrich

6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less

The rise of mobile devices heralds a new era for Global Voices and citizen media at large. In developing countries, mobiles could become the most available and in time the cheapest access to the Web. This project seeks to beta test a small scale “news via mobile or SMSs” experiment with a panel of 30+ beta users (Half being  mobile and news savvy contributors/translators of GV, and half not acquainted with GV or news on mobile)  located in Europe, South America, South Asia, Africa. The project aims to provide GV with feedback and findings on the following questions: 1- how can a citizen news outlets like GV be identified as such on mobiles, as opposed to traditional news providers, and reach to mobile users while encouraging participation? 2 – Which technical solution, functionalities, tools are needed to foster participation, conversation, and to encourage readers in different countries to contribute and share multimedia contents/news with GV? 3- How could GV current news formats (text or multimedia) be tailored to be useful and engaging for a global audience on mobile devices or even via SMSs, despite the regional constraints and differences in news reading? Special focus will be on users with limited and sometimes expensive connection, and/or not acquainted with citizen news or even smartphones. Findings from the two-month live test, will be presented to the GV community during the next GV Summit to inform the community and a discussion on the prospects of a GV mobile solution.

7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?

MGV (Mobile GV) wishes to address some of the questions raised by the fast migration of contents mobile handsets, globally, for a citizen website that does not only aim at distributing news, but has a wider mission. It seeks to provide feedback to the community and GV core-team, based on a 2-month live test with a multicultural panel in different regions of the world, to better understand the format, functionalities and possibilities to encourage participation and content sharing.

8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?

Global Voices’ mission, to amplify online conversation and make new voices heard, tackles a new environment on mobile handsets. The project wishes to gather and analyse users experiences and reactions to GVM in different contexts, from users with different profiles, in April and May 2012. The questions at stake are many, but the scope of the project is to identify readers interest and appreciation to different formats on their mobile, how they can be encouraged to participate in discussion, crowd sourced news and translations. It would also seek to list the prospects and challenges, the technical solutions and monetizing opportunities, when reaching out to a multilingual, multicultural, audience across the world on a small screen – with sometime limited and expensive mobile access.

9. What is innovative about your project?

The innovation lies in adopting a bottom up and multicultural approach to citizen news on mobile, testing GVM on users in different continents/contexts, with different interest and knowledge of mobile technology, to identify challenges and reactions to GV contents, willingness to use apps and tool to contribute, and to provide fresh ideas and perspectives.

10. Which section of Global Voices would your project most benefit (if applicable)?

GV in English
Lingua
Rising Voices
GV Advocacy

11. How would the wider GV community utilize and/or participate in your project?

The participation and support of the GV community and friends/partners of our community in the academic and mobile technology industry would be essential. The project would need technical skills and counseling for the development or choice of a simple platform and interface, editorial support, and local support to recruit beta testers and gather feedback. Lingua editors and contributors could help identify and recruit beta testers reflecting different cultures, languages, and technology literacy. They could be of great help to interpret context, costs and strategies, barriers to access, local users habits, and to relay the findings in their respective context. The community could in turn benefit from a “sand box” to experiment locally with their contents and communities and learn from other GV communities, getting a clearer picture of the challenges and possibilities offered by this first step for their local readership.

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.

Beta testers will be recruited and interviewed on their experience on GVM by different GV and Lingua community/members, able to contextualize their experience. Africa: GV French networks in Francophone Africa. Greece: Asteris Mousaras. South America: Juan Arellano. Brazil: Paula Goes. South Asia: Rezwan and Bijoy.

13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?

Access to mobile industry expertise, development expertise in the GV community at large, either on a pro-bono or willing to contribute for a moderate fee, would be of great help. Contacts are underway with experts, NGOs, sponsors, and developers in Africa as well as in the Francophone tech community and any lead or advice on potential technical contributors, experts, and funders would be useful and much appreciated.

14. Describe the prospects for sustainability/continuation once the innovation grant funding ends

Given the current interest for mobile contents, it is hoped that both the private and non-profit sectors will be interested in branching on a multicultural, multi country, live-test and involve GV in their future projects.  Humanitarian news, and mobile education, for instance, are topics of great interest for big NGOs currently: a partnership could be facilitated by the dissemination of the findings. Private or public sector media in Europe and elsewhere, who are currently exploring mobile news, can be approached. Telco companies in Africa, thriving with massive adoption rates of news via mobile, could also be a prospect to monetize or share revenues from mobile GV contents.

15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish

February – March 2012:  building or choosing and tweaking  a mobile platform, contacting sponsors and local mobile phones/access providers, designing and beta testing a format/content for daily/weekly edition for mobile testers, Recruiting and coaching members of the panel. April – May 2012: Testing the daily/weekly edition of GV mobile news (text and multimedia) on mobile site + via SMSs, weekly reporting via online survey or skype conversation, collation and analysis of feedback. June 2012: presentation and discussion of results during GV Summit

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)

– Hardware/connection costs: It is hoped that local telephone retailers and access providers could sponsor part of the project, in some countries, by providing free or lent  smartphones with built-in camera or video for fifteen beta users, and credit bulk “minutes” of mobile connection for this project.- Technical development and maintenance: 2000 USD

– Project management and related expenses: USD 2000

– Provision for mobile internet connection costs and bulk SMSs  : USD 1000

 

 

 

 

 

Project proposal: Global Voices Aymarata Taking Over Where the Internet Ends

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1. Full name
Anders Vang Nielsen
2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute
Lingua
3. Publication date of your latest post or translation
Date: – 15/1/2012
4. Title of project
Global Voices Aymarata Taking Over Where the Internet Ends
5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)
Anders Vang Nielsen
6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less
Considering the poor outreach of Global Voices Aymarata (roughly 300 visits per month) mainly due to the lack of fast and cheap Internet access throughout the potential followers of that project, the proposal is to distribute the content from Global Voices Aymarata as a newspaper as well as digital/analog audio (as some people only have cassette players), considering the low rates of literacy in the region. The distribution of these materials will take place in the urban and rural areas of the cities of La Paz and El Alto as well as in the Altiplano Region, home to the majority of Bolivia’s Aymara-speakers, many of whom are monolingual. The translator team of Global Voices Aymarata will participate in the elaboration and distribution of the materials together with the Project Coordinator. Ultimately, the initiative should be contemplated as a pilot-project for underrepresented indigenous languages, serving as inspiration for other cases alike in other parts of the world, as well as encouraging the collaborators in their effort to reach out to their target groups.
7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?
The outreach of the indigenous languages editions of GV Lingua (i.e. Global Voices Aymarata) is crucial to the success and justification of those, also in terms of encouragement to the contributors involved to continue their engagement. The proposed project addresses precisely these issues (the lack of outreach to a broader audience) as identified by the translator team of Global Voices Aymarata. Given the nature of the project as a joint collaboration between the Aymara and Danish editions of GV Lingua, it also helps to establish new links in-between the GV community, emphasizing the inclusion of the collaborators to GV Aymarata and so their sense of being part of a greater community.
8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?
The project is directly linked to the main goal of GV of providing the means to join the global conversation to anyone who wants to speak and listen. Being the representation of the content found on GV in different languages, and specifically indigenous underrepresented 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 dignity. 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 (delivering newspapers to schools and universities in both rural and urban areas, 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 including, 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)?
Rising Voices
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, and 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.
Victoria Tinta, editor GV Aymarata; Assistant coordinator. Elias Quispe Chura, translator GV A.; Recording of audio versions, distribution. Victor Paco, translator GV A.; Recording of audio versions, distribution. Ruben Helari, translator GV A.; Recording of audio versions, distribution. Emma Quispev, translator GV A.; Recording of audio versions, distribution. Martha Valencia, translator GV A.; Distribution. Celia Saucedo, translator GV A.; Distribution. Irma Laura, translator GV A.; Distribution. Edwin Quispe, translator GV A.; Distribution. Martin Canaviri, translator GV A.; Distribution. Everyone at GV Aymarata: – Contributing to the initial design/planning of the newspaper – Selection of adequate material taking into mind the target audience – Writing or translating introductory articles – Helping out in production and promotion of the material.
13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?
For the recording of spoken audio versions of the articles, as well as broadcasting of those on air, a local radio station already known by the GV Aymarata team will be engaged.
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 (possibly through advertising), thus securing the on-going of this singular project.
15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish
Mid-February to March (2 weeks): Planning and initial design of material. Selection of articles to be included (Everyone). March (3 weeks): Production and printing of material (Project Coordinator). Recording of audio versions and production of CD’s/cassettes (GV Aymarata Translators as specified). End-March (1 week): Coordination of distribution (Everyone). Mid-April to May (3 weeks): Distribution and promotion of material (Everyone). Broadcasting of audio versions on local radio (GV Aymarata team). May (2-3 weeks): Elaboration of concluding documentation and analysis; follow-up on feedback received (Project Coordinator).
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)
Printed material (1200 copies, 32 pages): $800 CD’s, cassettes (150 CD’s, 50 cassettes): $150 Travel expenses (3x Cochabamba-La Paz by bus; local transport): $60 Distribution (rental of minibus; local transport; catering): $300 Internet and telecommunication (for coordination purposes between team members): $50 Honorarium to radio engineer: $50 TOTAL: $1410

Project proposal: Cojiro, a cross-lingual curation tool

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1. Full name
Tomomi Sasaki
2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute
GV in English
Lingua
3. Publication date of your latest post or translation
Date: – 9/1/2012
4. Title of project
Cojiro, a cross-lingual curation tool
5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)
Chris Salzberg
6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less
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
7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?
Our project addresses three aspects of Global Voices: 1. GV is a closed platform: people cannot contribute without approval from the community of editors. 2. GV does not offer a natural way for people who lack writing (or translation) skills to contribute to content creation in other ways (e.g. through knowledge of specific topics) 3. Translators and writers are separate groups without a natural way to collaborate (decentralized publishing reverses the flow of translation but doesn’t really change this). 1. and 2. are reminiscent of traditional journalism, which separates content consumers from content producers. Having this type of barrier prevents the kind of spontaneous, low-threshold contributions that power popular community sites such as Quora (expert answers), Amazon (product reviews) and Slashdot (news curation). There is no lack of tools and platforms which enable open contributions of the kind described in 1. and 2., and indeed GV has used many of them (blogs, wiki, etc.). But the real problem — and the real opportunity — comes with the third point: most of these platforms do not deal with languages in a way which would enable Global Voices authors, Lingua translators and their community of readers to collaborate freely in story-writing. Cojiro is an attempt to fill this void.
8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?
Cojiro will further GV’s mission by creating a shared space for GV authors, translators and readers to collaborate in content curation and creation. This would add transparency to the story-writing process, which currently is mostly hidden from readers. It could also bring down the barriers to cross-regional collaboration, which has been greeted with enthusiasm at summits but achieved limited success in practice. The process of actually “building a tool” would also, we feel, be beneficial for GV to be a part of. The Global Voices website states that GV will “work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard”, but in practice GV has mostly used existing tools rather than built its own. This is unfortunate given the growing importance of tool-building to modern news-gathering (see data journalism, for example), and the unique set of problems that GV faces, which often go beyond the features of popular web services (e.g. translation in Storify).
9. What is innovative about your project?
Most projects tackle language barriers with one of two solutions: human translation or machine translation. A project like Meedan, for example, focuses on how to efficiently combine both to create a space for parallel conversations in Arabic/English. We look at the problem differently, not as a translation problem but as one of combining the right sets of skills in the right way. Our approach is to minimize translation by targeting only the most important and valuable elements of a story, and situate this translation as part of a larger curation workflow. Full texts are never translated and language agnostic content such as images play a strong role. This approach gives a clear sense of purpose to the translation, and allows for useful contributions without demanding a large investment of time. A tool like this will impact the way that GV contributors and audiences interact with our content, in a way that highlights the cross-lingual aspect that is unique to Global Voices.
10. Which section of Global Voices would your project most benefit (if applicable)?
GV in English
Lingua
11. How would the wider GV community utilize and/or participate in your project?
We’d love for a subset of the wider community to use the tool in their daily gathering/writing process and provide feedback on product development. This would be accomplished by setting up instances of the tool in the relevant language pairs for a few interested communities.
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.
* Chris Salzberg: Product lead & head developer * Tomomi Sasaki: User experience & community outreach * Taku Nakajima: Project development and technology strategy adviser
13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?
Front-end coding and graphic design resources are required to speed up the development process, especially as the service becomes available to more users and we gather feedback. Cojiro receives voluntary support from two companies: AQ, the creative agency where Tomomi works, provided the visual identity and will continue to offer their expertise in building digital tools. Brain Co,.Ltd., the system development company where Taku works, provides consulting on system architecture. http://www.aqworks.com http://www.brain-tokyo.jp/
14. Describe the prospects for sustainability/continuation once the innovation grant funding ends
Cojiro started in 2010 as a volunteer project, and we have managed to build a proof of concept and working prototype without any material support. The funding will greatly help in advancing the project but the project will not necessarily halt once it ends. Currently, we see two future avenues, which are not mutually exclusive: 1) Cojiro could be financially supported by multiple parties and worked on by the original team in their available time, in much the way Global Voices operates. 2) Anyone interested in the tool could participate in its development or fork the codebase to start their own version. Cojiro is being developed as open source software on the github platform under our team name Netalab, and is open to any collaborators.
15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish
The award will help cojiro reach the next stage, but there is no clear start or finish to this project. Cojiro is currently a password protected prototype that is available to a couple of people. With the funding, we would build an alpha version that can withstand usage from a bigger group of testers. After the project team and our testers are happy with the quality of the service, our goal would be to deploy it to support wider usage. Once more details are provided, we can draw up a timeline in a way that’s relevant to the award.
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)
Estimated cost for one year ($5,000) * Services and infrastructure costs ($1,700) ** Linode server ($500) ** Domain names ($100) ** Third party services, including Embedly ($1,000) ** License fees for fonts and icons ($100) * Development resources ($2,300) ** Backend development ($1,300) ** Frontend coding ($1,000) * Non-development costs ($1,000) ** Conference attendance fees ($500) ** Incidentals for meetings ($300) ** Books and tutorials ($200)

Project proposal: GV Author’s Deep Pool

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1. Full name
Chris Moya
2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute
GV in English
Rising Voices
3. Publication date of your latest post or translation
Date: – 30/12/2011
4. Title of project
GV Author’s Deep Pool
5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)
Chris Moya
6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less
As an author I am always saving web links, CC images, tweets, videos into my text editor or similar. I propose to develop a “deep pool”, where any of us can save all of the resources that we find surfing the web into a globalized repository. It will be possible to separate the resources for an especific post and even share them with the community. It will be possible, also to create a profile getting data from GV wordpress database so it may be more personalized
7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?
This project is addresed to all the authors of GV and will make the process of preparing, compilation of interesting data and writting easyer.
8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?
It will create a huge database of resources that authors will use to write posts while helping them not to loose time while compilating all the resources they need to write a post.
9. What is innovative about your project?
GV community do not have a repository of resources shareable between us or that will help in our process of creating: web surfing –> saving/sharing interesting data –> writting a post
10. Which section of Global Voices would your project most benefit (if applicable)?
GV in English
Rising Voices
11. How would the wider GV community utilize and/or participate in your project?
Any author (or anyone) will have the possibility to create a repository with any useful resource they find while looking for info to write a post. Any member of the community will have the posibility to save/share a web resource with the rest.
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.
No Response
13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?
As a senior web developer I think I can manage it by myself. A space into GV web server with PHP tech supported (GV WordPress is already based on PHP)
14. Describe the prospects for sustainability/continuation once the innovation grant funding ends
I think the project can become a huge database of GVers resources. Getting data from GV WordPress just to create the profiles automatically using BLTI technology (single-sign-on). Expand GV web site. Keep authors into GV web environment.
15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish
2 weeks — think tank – Previous design 6 weeks — Front end development 12 weeks — Back end development
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)
$5,000

Project proposal: GV – Filming our posts

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1. Full name
Juan Arellano Valdivia
2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute
Lingua
3. Publication date of your latest post or translation
Date: – 24/1/2012
4. Title of project
GV – Filming our posts
5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)
Juan Arellano Valdivia
6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less
The intention is to create Global Voices own videos through agreements with small independent video producers (individuals and organizations) in Spanish speaking countries. So these producers would be in charge of creating audiovisual material per request (Us specifying the subject and other requirements for the video). The videos would be produced fortnightly (each time in a different country) as a base for GV articles. Articles that will be especially written by our authors from those countries. Thus, our content will be dynamized and will feed our YouTube channel in order to enrich its image and attract new audiences. Furthermore, to attract people interested in video production, a citizen video contest will be held during the project.
7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?
The project covers GV’s lack of own audiovisual material that would facilitate using the whole potential video has in informing and spreading content through platforms such as Youtube.
8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?
The process of creating and publishing own video material through the alliance of Global Voces and video producers allows to include citizens’ voices from unrepresented communities or sectors on (and off) the internet and record their opinions about a specific matter, differently from the text.
9. What is innovative about your project?
The innovative part lies with the combination of already existing Concepts, such as viralization power via Youtube, the collaborative associations between Global Voices and other institutions, and the ability Global Voices has to write articles based on citizen contents. This merge of elements hasn’t been previously tested on Global Voices and it is innovative as it allows to provide a renewed image to the public we already have, and to bring more individuals and collaborators to our network.
10. Which section of Global Voices would your project most benefit (if applicable)?
GV in English
Lingua
11. How would the wider GV community utilize and/or participate in your project?
The idea of the project can be replicated on other sites of Global Voices, and so the whole community can be involved and also contribuye with the sustainability and its continuance in time, sharing the produced videos and proposing alliances with other smaill video producters. If this proposal is chosen, at the end of its period I will publish a Guide with its procedures and experiences as a way to help duplicate it in others GV sites, and to stablish a long term plan.
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.
Cati Restrepo – Be aware of topics that are generating discussion in Spanish speaking countries. – Coordinate with video producers the making of the videos (topic, duration, deadlines submitting the video to Global Voices). – Collaborate with broadcasting the video once it’s been published.
13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?
– The networks of GV Latam-team – Alliances with institutions such as Flickr or Vimeo for a video competition that would be created during the project.
14. Describe the prospects for sustainability/continuation once the innovation grant funding ends
To assure the project will keep on going, during the project a video competition will be promoted, that will allow to add to our network small independent video producers (organizations and individuals as well) that are not participanting in the project’s first part, besides that we could present our videos in audiovisual competitions. Besides that, the production of new videos might be possible through alliances with Communication schools.
15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish
Ten months. Fortnightly publication. Every fortnight, a different country and topic. By the fifth month, a competition will be held for new independent producers.
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)
Human resources. – Coordinator: US $100 per month (Total US $1000) – Assistant coordinator: US $500 (unique payment) – Video producer: US $150 per video (Total US$ 3000) – Competition prize: US $500

Project proposal: GV Music

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1. Full name
Tarek Amr
2. Global Voices sections to which you contribute
GV in English
Lingua
GV Advocacy
3. Publication date of your latest post or translation
Date: – 10/1/2012
4. Title of project
GV Music
5. Project representative (person who will sign award agreement and receive funds)
The Appointed Editor
6. Describe the proposed project as clearly as possible in five sentences or less
Doing to underground music what Global Voices has done to blogs. Discover, curate underground music, and present it to the world. Comment on discovered music and put it in its cultural context if possible.
7. What aspect or need of Global Voices does your project address?
The need to discover new music, especially underground bands that are normally ignored by mainstream media. Shed the light on them and make them more searchable by genre, location, etc.
8. How would the project further Global Voices’ mission?
I believe this will add to GV message, as music is part of the culture of the countries we cover. It will help building bridges between different cultures. And finally, it will help us reach now audience with different tastes.
9. What is innovative about your project?
There are many music blogs all over the internet, but normally they are managed by one member or few ones, and they are not able to cover the whole globe. Also more importantly, those blogs are not easy to search into, and music is not well tagged, or geo-tagged. Adding to this, they normally share illegal music via Megaupload et al, which makes this music not accessible forever. In brief, normal blogging platform aren’t meant to be used for this. Other sites like Lastfm and Hypemachine are automated, they just aggregate what people listen to or share on twitter, which makes underground music get buried under mainstream one, and normally, the music there is not downloadable, in lastfm, you just know about the band, but need to go download the music somewhere, mainly because it is copyrighted. What we are going to work on is underground music not licensed, or licensed under creative commons or similar copyleftis licenses. On one hand authors will discover the music add it to a blog-like platform, tag it with its appropriate genre and location, but also there will be a map so you can find music by location. We also can bind it to Lastfm API to see stats about how many time that track was played, we can also find away to get reactions on twitter and tie it to posts. I am not sure whether we will rely or Soundcloud or Youtube ot something else to embed the music in posts.
10. Which section of Global Voices would your project most benefit (if applicable)?
GV in English
Lingua
11. How would the wider GV community utilize and/or participate in your project?
GV Music will work in a similar way as GV, there will be Editor(s) and and Authors, they all we do the discovery of the music, aggregating and commenting on it. And where else can we find a more diverse them than the one we already have in GV. So generally, they team will be composed of GV members, however outsiders are welcomed to join any time.
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.
I recommend Debora Baldelli to head the GV Music team as she has strong academic music background as well as passion. However we can call for whoever want to join as Editor and select the most appropriate one(s). I will also handle the technical issues from setting the platform, doing the integration with whatever needed web services, etc. Other than that, we will call for all GV community to join and participate.
13. What additional resources or expertise, if any, would you need to complete the project?
No Response
14. Describe the prospects for sustainability/continuation once the innovation grant funding ends
Not really sure if Google Ads or any other Ads service will be sufficient. But we may reach for agreements with local radios, so we discover the music for them, and they do co-branded shows with us and pay us some fees in return. We may also make agreements with Soundcloud as we will be getting them more traffic through our portal
15. Please specify the timeline for the project, from start to finish
The first phase we last for 4 months, and if things went well and we were able to do more deals with radios and online music services, we can give ourselves the chance to keep experiencing for 4 more months and during this period we will be planning the long term evolution of the project to last for indefinite time
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)
We need an incentive to keep the project going and the team active. I imagine a group of 1 Editor and 8 Authors paying them $400 and $200 respectively, to do about 4 posts per months for the first 4 months, then if things went well, we can extend it to 4 more months. Later on if we can generate more money for the agreements and Ads revenue mentioned above we can increase the team members and may be re-structure the incentive as well.