Global Voices - 5 Years of Talking, Are You Still Listening?
The big barrier between what is produced in major languages and the distribution of such information to other less significant languages, is still latent and the cause for which many languages are in danger of extinction.Therein lies the work of Global Voices Online (GVO). During these past 5 years it has been not only linking cultures, developing support for underprivileged communities, defending freedom of speech, but also contributing to throw down the language barriers.
We didn't have the opportunity to make the first steps that the founders had to make, but since we joined three and half years ago, we had the opportunity to contribute a good deal of what we know, thanks to David Sasaki, whose persuasion had the outcomes and who has played a key role in the development and growth of Global Voices in all areas.
In very appealing posts, first founder and former CNN reporter Rebecca MacKinnon, presents her vision of what it has meant for her the network of Global Voices, her work with Ethan Zuckerman and the role and performance of the arms with which the organization is working: Rising Voices, Global Voices Advocacy Global Voices and Lingua.
From being part of the Berkman Center at Harvard University, GVO has become an independent, nongovernmental organization integrated by an international network of bloggers and citizen journalists, as recounts in great detail the great David Sasaki, who shall introduce to the participants of one of the very first meetings of Global Voices.
Since GVO is not a website about Human Rights, there are many post we've found of our interest so far. One was the rally behind Fouad Mourtada, who at some point was recognized as the Martyr of the Net. Global Voices does storytelling some times and in this field, we enjoyed reading The Cheroot Story or was happening with Tamil people when they smoke the cigars very popular in Latin American Cultures like Cuba. There in another post that caught our attention, it was Blogging from Prison, where its author explains what is like to be lacked up in the American prisons.
These are only a very small number of articles we have picked as important to us. But we also learned throughout to the Series Blogger of the Week, many of the more of 200 hundred authors to whom GVO is their family and the best place to broadcast what it's happening in their origin countries.
There are several areas that have now become our way of making contacts on the internet, in this process GVO has played a leading role. It's thanks to Global Voices, that we had the audacity to begin this blog in English, a thing that when we were young and in the university classrooms, we have ever thought. We became translators and have been able to expand our lines of communication not only worldwide but in our mother tongue, the Spanish.
Global Voices became a way not only to 'export' information about Ecuador, in our case, but has allowed us to meet via the internet or in person, several GVO family members. Special mention deserves Solana Larsen, our managing editor.
The blogger activities requires time, this is definitive. Therefore, from Education & Tech we extend our deepest gratitude for the person who patiently not only reads, edits and even rewrites our posts, with him we learned not only to write, but to do it better and in a professional manner with a focus in the journalism principles. Those who are journalists know it. Thanks to Eduardo Avila, our editor for Latin America.
As a result of living in the U.S. I could not let out our ancestral roots. Global Voices has served not only to make us better and more informed about Ecuador, but has allowed us to establish fraternal ties with Ecuadorians over there in the half the world. It requires another post to talk about. However we can not close this one, without making mention of another fellow citizen working with the Lingua Project, he obliges us to continue translating. Thanks Juan Arellano!
Happy Holidays to all here in the U.S and there at Global Voices!
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