Global Voices

When Global Voices was formed, Its objectives were: first, to enable and empower a community of "bridge bloggers" who "can make a bridge between two languages, or two cultures."^[1] Second to develop tools and resources to make achieving the first objective more effective. It has maintained a working relationship with mainstream media. Reuters, for example, gave Global Voices unrestricted grants from 2006 to 2008.^[2] For its contribution to innovation in journalism, Global Voices was granted the 2006 Knight-Batten Grand Prize.^[3] Global Voices was also recognized in 2009 with the University of Denver's Anvil of Freedom award for contributions to journalism and democracy.^[4]

The organization stated its goals as of 2012^[update]:

• "Call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens' media around the world by linking to text, photos, podcasts, video and other forms of grassroots citizens' media."
• "Facilitate the emergence of new citizens' voices through training, online tutorials, and publicizing the ways in which open-source and free tools can be used safely by people around the world".
• "Advocate for freedom of expression ... and protect the rights of citizen journalists".^[5]

Global Voices achieves these goals through four key initiatives:

Newsroom: The multilingual newsroom team reports on people whose voices and experiences are rarely seen in mainstream media.^[6] Global Voices has a team of regional editors that aggregates and selects conversations from a variety of blogospheres, with a particular focus on non-Western and underrepresented voices. Contributors are volunteers.^[7]

Translation: The Lingua volunteers make stories available in dozens of languages to ensure that language is not a barrier to understanding.^[6]

Advocacy: The Advox team defends free speech online, paying special attention to legal, technical and physical threats to people using the internet to speak out in the public interest.^[6]

Empowerment: Rising Voices provides training and mentorship to local underrepresented communities who want to tell their own stories using participatory media tools.^[6]

Global Voices has a community blog for Global Voices contributors to share stories. It also has special projects from time to time such as the Civic Media Observatory.

Services: Expert translation, editorial, and mentorship services from a global community, fuelling the Global Voices non-profit mission.^[8]

Global Voices has organized biannual summits and bloggers meetings for their virtual community to meet face-to-face.^[9]

• Marianne Díaz Hernández
• Arzu Geybullayeva
• Omid Memarian
• Nanjala Nyabola
• Malka Older
• Raymond Palatino