Global Voices » Bernardo Parrella

‘Tribewanted’ Creates, Connects Eco-Villages

Bernardo Parrella — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:58:45 +0000

Renewable energy, permaculture and green building, along with local traditions and eco-tourism: welcome to Tribewanted – an online community launched in 2006 based on the idea of “global citizenship” and harnessing the energy of social media to meaningfully connect and practice positive behavior change. Thanks to crowdfunding strategies, the project plans to build 10 eco-villages around the world: after Vorovoro (Fiji Islands) and John Obey (Sierra Leone), a new village just launched in Monestevole [it], in Umbria, the heart of Italy. Connect with Tribewanted people via web, Facebook or Vimeo.

Truthloader: New YouTube Show on Citizen Journalism

Bernardo Parrella — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:53:54 +0000

Truthloader is a new daily YouTube show, produced by UK-based ITN in partnership with YouTube, that brings investigative and citizen journalism together, focusing mostly on under-reported news stories from around the globe. They also host a weekly live debate on Google Hangout. Yesterday's show asked “Can citizen journalism change the world?” and is archived here. You can follow Truthloader on Facebook and Twitter.

New GV e-book: African Voices of Hope and Change

Bernardo Parrella — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 18:19:50 +0000

Here is a perfect gift to salute the new year: our new e-book dedicated to Africa's Sub-Saharan region. “African Voices of Hope and Change,” gives you an intimate perspective into the stories and people of Sub-Saharan Africa through our best English-language posts from 2012. From a total of about 800 posts produced over the year from the region, we hand-picked 13 posts to feature from Senegal, Uganda, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mauritania, Kenya, Angola and other countries.

You are welcome to download it here. You can even send a copy (in PDF, ePub or Mobipocket format) to your relatives or friends across the world, maybe as a present for their donation to GV. Most important, please spread the word in your global circles, social networks and anywhere you deem fit!

African Voices of Hope and Change is more evidence of the power of we‘, a collective effort focusing on places and people too often ‘forgotten’ by mainstream media worldwide, despite Africa’s diverse but promising growth in the upcoming years. As stated in the ebook introduction, “At the start of the new millennium, it felt as though the African continent was essentially written off by the international community… [but] recent statistics suggest that nine of the fastest-growing economies in the world are in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

And while many experts actually believe that new technology's most lasting influence will be on a broadening field of education, “also important is the potential for leveraging technology towards a more general transparency and accountability, as shown by initiatives based on social and citizen media for monitoring local elections or making government data available on the Internet.”

Aimed at providing a larger context and fostering the Global Voices mission, this collection of 2012 posts will try to parse out such complex framework and open up the horizon for the upcoming year. These voices tell us about moving forward in hope and change, their accounts reveal a path infused with struggle and collaboration.

Thanks to Mohamed Adel for technical support and to those who variously contributed to articles selected for this new e-book: Afef Abrougui, Ahmed Jedou, Anna Gueye, Eleanor Staniforth, Endalk, James Propa, Kofi Yeboah, Lova Rakotomalala, Nwachukwu Egbunike, Richard Wanjohi, Sara Gold, Sara Moreira, and Ndesanjo Macha.

EU in Crisis: First E-Book by Global Voices

Bernardo Parrella — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 20:22:08 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage Europe in Crisis.

“EU in Crisis” is the first production of our new Global Voices Books project and includes the best material from social conversation, participation and mobilization boosted by citizens going through the tough times of austerity in the old continent and beyond.

We hand-picked and assembled the best posts, from our special coverage on Europe in Crisis launched in Spring 2011, and written by our team of dedicated international citizen-reporters.

The e-book is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License and is available for downloading in three different formats:

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

“EU in Crisis” ebook Cover

Along with an original introduction which gives broader context on the issue, this e-book includes 13 posts in English (other language editions are currently underway) which cover Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and other European countries, affected by the banking and Euro crisis, through the lens of participatory online media.

This e-book is intended as a flexible tool for further dissemination and discussion about these on-going issues.

Up until July 2012, our dedicated team of about 80 volunteers produced over 80 posts in English, many them translated in various languages.

Global Voices Books aims at “sharing citizen media for the future“, as our subtitle reads, based on GV's huge archive and its on-going multi-language production. We will put out electronic publications according to topics, regions, issues, languages, media, etc. and in a variety of formats, thus providing broader exposure to the best material produced over the years by our community.

Please spread the word, check out the Global Voices Books website and get involved!

This post is part of our special coverage Europe in Crisis.

Thumbnail image reprinted from from Vectorportal.com, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Robert F. Kennedy Award Will Recognize Social Media Journalism

Bernardo Parrella — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:01:03 +0000

One of the foremost international human rights organizations, the Robert F. Kennedy Center, is calling for nominations to a new Journalism Award on International Photography and International Social Media hosted by their European Office in Florence, Italy. The award will recognize the achievements of professionals and students who investigate human rights issues and advocate for change.

The journalism award is a first step of a long-term Smart Dissident Project by the RFK Center, aiming at providing digital activists from countries in the Middle East and North Africa with a physical working space (the former prison complex Le Murate in Florence, now beautifully restored) and an opportunity to stand up for freedom of expression and for the defense of human rights. The winners in the professional categories will win two weeks stay at Le Murate complex.

Previous award winners have been given a bust of Robert F. Kennedy, a civil rights activist and U.S. politician who was shot dead in 1968, only five years after the death of his brother President John F. Kennedy.

As part of the same project the Center will offer a course on “Social Media and Human Rights: Can Smart Dissidents Create Change?” planned for 18-19 June, 2012 (with participation from Global Voices), followed by the Journalism Award ceremony.

Nomination entries should describe the causes, conditions and remedies of injustice and critical analysis of relevant public policies, programs, attitudes, and private endeavors.

Submission deadline is May 15, 2012 (click here to download an entry form).

Updates from the RFK European Office are on Twitter:

@RFKennedyEurope: RFKennedy Journalism award 2012 on SM and human rights is open to blogs: http://bit.ly/AwardEntryForm – http://bit.ly/JournalismAward #egypt #syria

The Robert F. Kennedy Center present awards every year for both Human Rights and Journalism. In September 2011, the winner of the Human Rights Award was Frank Mugisha, Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, an umbrella organisation that protects LGBTI people in the country.

Egypt: One year after the revolution, 10% of its Social Media Documentation is already gone

Bernardo Parrella — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:45:53 +0000

One year after the Egyptian revolution, 10% of its Social Media Documentation is already gone. An article on US magazine The Atlantic explains how this is happening, quoting a study conducted by a phD student in computer science and Web preservation at Old Dominion University. “Twitter gives us a new version of ‘the first rough draft of history.’ But tweets are fragile things.”

Egypt: revolt's anniversary at Tahrir

Bernardo Parrella — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:55:55 +0000

Egyptian Twitter-sphere reports that jailed blogger #Maikel Nabil has just been released, while people are gathering for tomorrow's big rally at #Tahrir to celebrate the revolt's first anniversary: “feels chaotic and it's starting to rain” (#25jan).

ActionAid: halve world hunger by 2015

Bernardo Parrella — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:29:10 +0000

“Let's fight climate change & hunger. Together” is a new video released by ActionAid & produced by the LatteCreative team, to support the world food crisis campaign and keep the ‘pressure on governments to deliver on their promise to halve world hunger by 2015′.

Italy: Huge celebrations for Berlusconi's resignation

Bernardo Parrella — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:50:59 +0000

Millions of Italians (worldwide) are celebrating an historic moment: the official resignation of PM Silvio Berlusconi, now on his way to the Presidential Palace. Huge celebrations are also being planned online, with live video streaming from downtown Rome, Facebook pages, YouTube videos, on-going tweets and so on.

Italy: “Wiretapping Bill” could drastically limit freedom of information

Bernardo Parrella — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:47:04 +0000

The Italian Parliament is about to vote on a very stringent “wiretapping Bill” [it] aimed at drastically limiting judicial investigations and journalism inquiries, thus blocking free speech about new scandals exposing top-level politicians, as many of such cases keep emerging. After a recent “strike” by Wikipedia Italy [it] and a pouring of protests, a provision requesting all websites and blogs to immediately rectify any content that anybody deems “detrimental to his/her own image”, has been removed.

CEE Bankwatch Network campaign against EBRD practices

Bernardo Parrella — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:03:35 +0000

The CEE Bankwatch Network, an NGO monitoring activities of international financial institutions, has just released a video sharply criticizing the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's 20th anniversary of activities in former Soviet Bloc countries, and its intentions to extend to north Africa. “The EBRD has in fact a poor track record of keeping up with its mission to protect human rights and the environment and promote justice.” The Network campaign requests the EBRD to promote “environmentally-sustainable, socially-just, renewable energy-based societies rather than just market economies.”

Haiti: update on unrest after elections

Bernardo Parrella — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:04:36 +0000

While back in Haiti to finish shooting a Web documentary project on the unheard voices of reconstruction, web-reporter Giordano Cossu provides a personal account on the on-going unrest after the controversial elections: “Much of this is in the hands of the Electoral Committee now. The population has already decided what they need, after one year under tarps, defenseless against storms and cholera: no more of the same.”

A journey through the unheard voices of Haiti’s reconstruction

Bernardo Parrella — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 21:53:16 +0000

Giordano Cossu from Italy and Benoit Cassegrain from France are two web-reporters managing Solidar'IT in Haiti, a web project created in the footsteps of the Paris Crisis Camp aimed at using the Internet and other technologies to help Haitians affected by last January's earthquake.

As an independent, multimedia non-profit project, Solidar'IT in Haiti is a journey through the unheard voices of Haiti’s reconstruction, documenting the current post-earthquake situation by giving exposure to local citizens mostly excluded from the reconstruction process and still living in an emergency state.

In an interview via Skype, Giordano Cossu explains that he and Cassegrain lived in Haiti for about two months last summer, talking with people and shooting videos for their documentary:

“There is a lot of frustration on the ground, not only by those still living in tents (often filled with holes) in camps, but also on the part of volunteers and organizations trying to offer help and provide solutions. Our plan is to give visibility to these voices, to avoid that information from and about Haiti [which] is being provided only by the NGOs on the ground with their own agendas to pursue, as is the case today 95% of the time.”

Refugee camp in Haiti (photo by SolidarIT in Haiti, under CC)

While the material gathered in Haiti will be finalized in a full web-documentary by year end, the current multimedia website hosts a variety of content in English and French:

Our multimedia blog is a way to expose our work-in-progress and enable people to directly access the most important testimonies we collected so far.

We decided to provide only short summaries online, leaving unfiltered and strong content directly in video and audio footage. Only by listening and watching these images can people actually understand the reality in Haiti — at least much deeper than just by reading the news!

As for the web-documentary format, it has only been around for about two years and provides very creative opportunities for viewers to arrange – in their own way – the various videos available.

The current living conditions in most tent camps still have few humane aspects, and the situation is especially challenging for the more vulnerable, such as women, children, and sick people.

Even before the earthquake, violence against women was already a problem, but after the earthquake it just blew up, despite local institutions trying to minimize it: in most camps at night there is no electricity and often there are only shared bathrooms for both men and women, thus creating a dangerous situation and heightening the feeling of frustration and insecurity.

With images and voices, Solidar'IT in Haiti explains how local women's organizations are dealing with these problems:

In the so-called “box of grief“, women put anonymous, handwritten letters telling their stories of violence and abuse: from being denied food to being raped by their relatives. Once a week that box is opened and those letters read in a public ceremony, thus creating hard but necessary moments of revelation and acting as communal therapy — and also increasing women's awareness about their own rights.

Box of grief (photo by Solidar'IT in Haiti, under CC)

Marie Sofonie is 25 years old and determined to break the silence about these abuses. She got involved in the AYITI SMS SOS project, which allows victims or witnesses of abuses to send an SMS text-message to a free number (3803 0303). Messages are then mapped geographically and classified based on the type of crime or help request, location and so on – by using the crowd-sourcing platform Ushahidi and the Frontline SMS service. The AYITI SMS SOS initiative is being supported by Survivors Connect, an organization closely related to Fondation Espoir, as well as by other groups of local women.

Marie Sofonie is in charge of reading and indexing those text-messages (already well over a thousand) and also contributes to the Solidar'IT blog: that's how her voice is becoming global.

Ralph is a young Haitian journalist hosting “A camp per day”, a 20-minute feature within a radio program called ENDK (“Enfomasyon nou dwe konnen”, meaning “Useful News”), produced by the NGO news organization Internews. He visits a different camp each day, and talks to the people to understand where the major problems are. His reports represent a direct line for the displaced people living in the camps to express their feelings and needs, and receive news about the other camps. ENDK is then broadcast daily by a network of 35 radio stations in Haiti. Ralph's story is another voice gathered and relaunched worldwide by the Solidar'IT in Haiti documentary.

The project website includes many other stories, including one about Radio Boukman, the community radio of Citè Soleil, a dangerous neighbourhood in Port-au-Prince, which also manages a hurricane prevention program without any international support. And there is also the The Koute Ayiti (Listen to Haiti) caravan, created to travel to the different provinces affected by the earthquake and to spread health and other vital information information to support reconstruction.

Radio Boukman, the voice of the voiceless in Cité Soleil, Haiti from Web-Reporter on Vimeo.

Today more than 1,5 million people still live in tents, the reconstruction process has barely started, and almost nobody covers Haiti anymore. In the streets and refugee camps there are already many malnourished children, easily identified by their orange hair. The United States promised more than a billion dollars in help, but that money has never been released, nor has it reached Haiti thus far.

Until last August, the only help that actually materialized were goods from Norway, Estonia, Australia and Brazil. Today, many people can live in a tent only because they could afford to buy one.

Most Haitians feel excluded by the same NGOs that are managing the refugee camps, with scarce information provided to them; an 18-24 month waiting period for a final home transfer is a long time in a hurricane-infested area. And while the government remains largely absent, civil society is trying to step in. One example is the 50 refugee camps (from a total of about 460 camps in the Port-au-Prince area alone) that are entirely managed by the independent youth organization FNJD, by sharing the little resources available.

The second part of the web-documentary is scheduled for this November, when Giordano Cossu and Benoit Cassegrain will again travel to Haiti to delve deeper into the reconstruction process, producing interviews and footage with and about local citizens.

To find out more about the Solidar'IT in Haiti project, you can visit their website/blog, follow their Facebook page or Twitter account. For direct donations, people can use Ulule, a crowd-funding platform.

New video from the Global Poverty Project

Bernardo Parrella — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:34:21 +0000

The educational and campaigning organisation Global Poverty Project has released a two-minute video that depicts how each of us, not world leaders, can actually end extreme poverty within a generation.

Italy: Social Media Week in Milan and Worldwide

Bernardo Parrella — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:30:33 +0000

This story was originally published on Global Voices in Italian on September 18, 2010

Social Media Week is an eclectic, multi-city, global event (Sept 20-24) aimed at connecting people, content, and conversations around emerging trends in social and mobile media. Last February edition attracted more than 7,500 attendees across 200 events in New York, Berlin, London, San Francisco, São Paulo and Toronto, while this week many simultaneous events are scheduled in Los Angeles, Bogotà, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Milan [it]. Social Media Week first took place in February 2009 in New York with over 2,500 people attending across forty different events.

Over 90 free events are planned in Milan [it] alone, managed by more than 250 people including bloggers, entrepreneurs and experts. A large kick-off event is scheduled for Monday September 20 at Milan University focused on the City 2.0 [it] about how technology, and social media in particular, can help support sustainable development in the cities of tomorrow. According to some estimates, more than 70% of world population will reside in an urban environment by 2050.

The whole machinery for Social Media Week runs through a variety of online media and venues, from the main website and Twitter account to a Facebook page and YouTube channel. Each city also manages its own website and social media. Here is a promotional video projected in Piazza Duomo in downtown Milan:

Along with many discussions and presentations related to entertainment, new gadgets and platforms, fashion, entrepreneurship, and so on, the Milan program will address issues related to the non-profit world, new media and citizen media. For instance, there will be presentations from Italy-based projects such as Socialidarity 2.0 (social & non-profit news) and Eticmedia (a web-TV based on Corporate Social Responsability), while a local team will offer ongoing internet workshops for the elderly.

In the afternoon of Wednesday September 22 [it], the mediateca Santa Teresa will host a series of panels on user-generated content, particularly covering the current blog evolution and the rampant success of Twitter and Facebook for distributing information. Also addressed will be the new relationship between traditional media and the growing trend of relying mostly or only on online sources. In other words, how are social media affecting the news-gathering landscape and the information industry? Could citizen media play an even larger role in defining such environments in the future? A round-table discussion will include Global Voices in Italian [it], represented by Eleonora Pantò.

In cities such as Buenos Aires and especially Mexico City the local participants will also address matters pertaining to education, such as an all-day event called Educación 2.0 [es], focusing on teacher and student partnerships using multimedia and collaborative tools in the classroom. The Los Angeles team launched a fundraising campaign supporting children in the heart of Skid Row — promoting and strengthening the direct involvement of digital citizens in the society at large.

In addition to the physical events, Social Media Week organizers will also live-stream many of the events and host real time conversations at socialmediaweek.org, thus reaching a vast worldwide public. Also planned are live interactions among participants in the various cities (where time zones permit). And of course there is always need for volunteers to help organize or promote events in your city for next year, to spread the word around the globe…