Citizen Media Project in Egypt
photo by Kristina B
Strengthening the voices of under-represented groups in Egypt through the use of digital media
Project:
To foster a resource and support network for outreach projects that use digital media to empower underrepresented voices and promote collaboration between bloggers and civil society organizations in Egypt. Micro grant funding and technical support was given to three citizen media projects in Egypt implemented by Rising Voices (outreach arm of Global Voices Online).
Activities:
The project supports the initiative to provide training, consulting and resources to marginalized and under-represented groups that seek to amplify their voices through the use of digital media.
Rising Voices published bilingual posts announcing the micro grant competition; a bilingual chat was organised to answer questions about the application process (29 participants plus more email questions). 40 applications were received (expected: 50-70), mainly in Arabic. Hbs AMEO supported in the selection of 3 projects. The following three winners were announced:
Mokattam Blog Tales will teach teenagers to use citizen media to tell the story of their neighborhood of Masaken Alzelzal - Alhadba Alwosta near the Mokattam Mountain, which was settled after the 1992 Cairo earthquake displaced many local residents.
Nazra for Feminist Studies will provide blogging workshops in Cairo and set up safe online spaces for Egyptians to write about and discuss taboo subjects such as sexual diversity and gender-related issues.
Women of Minya Day by Day will work with women in the ElMinya Governorate, who work seasonal or temporary jobs, and teach them how to use citizen media to tell their own personal stories.
Project pages and project blogs were created on the Rising Voices website. The three grantees are listed alongside previous grant winners currently supported by Rising Voices. These project pages contain background information on the projects and links to the external project websites
(some good videos have been produced)
• mokattam blog tales
The Arabic Language Features Editor published a series of posts introducing components of the Egyptian blogosphere and the context in which the three projects would be operating. These posts include topics relating to the taboos of sexuality and the representativeness of the Egyptian blogosphere .
Three video interviews were conducted and uploaded to the Rising Voices site introducing the project leaders. In these videos, the project leaders spoke about their plans for the project and why they believed the project to be important.
1. Video featuring Nevine Ebeid from the Minya project
2. Video featuring Nesma Gewily from the Mokattam project
3. Video featuring and Fatma Emam from the Exploring Taboos project
The projects were introduced to external media outlets and other forms of publicity. For example, the Women of Minya project and the Exploring Taboos project were featured in the Mogtamana online newsletter distributed by the Egyptian Civil Society Project of the Kamal Adham Center of the American University of Cairo. In addition, representatives of the Exploring Taboos project were able to present their project at the African Feminist Forum that took place in Dakar, Senegal in October, and a representative of the Women of Minya Day by Day project has been invited to the Visualizing Women's Rights workshop which took place in Amman, Jordan in early December.
Finally, Rising Voices completed three films with English subtitles highlighting each of the three projects. The videos are being hosted on the site Universal Subtitles, which allows for collaborative subtitling, and Global Voices will ask its volunteer translators to add subtitles in different languages, so that the videos can reach more language communities.
The videos can be accessed via:
-Exploring Taboos