Rising Voices Micro-Grant Proposals for Citizen Media Outreach

Rising Voices is seeking project proposals from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or individuals for funding of up to US$4,000 for digital media outreach projects around the world. According to the organisation, ideal applicants will present innovative and detailed proposals to teach citizen media techniques to under-represented communities that are poorly positioned to discover and take advantage of tools like blogging, video-blogging, or podcasting on their own.

“This funding opportunity is open to both NGOs and private individuals. However, if an NGO does not have experienced citizen media trainers on their staff, it is extremely important that they seek collaboration with the local blogging community to find the right trainer(s) with the necessary skills. On the other hand, it would also be highly beneficial for individual applicants to partner with an existing NGO from the communities they plan to serve in order to strengthen the project's impact.... Rising Voices seeks project proposals that share [its] mission of bringing voices from new communities, as well as underrepresented language groups to the online global conversation through the use of citizen media. The projects' primary activities should be to provide citizen media training workshops to the target community, as well as ongoing support and mentoring to the participants....

Examples of potential projects include:

• Distributing flip video cameras to local residents to help map and document environmental issues affecting the area and to propose solutions.
• Partnering with a local library with a computer lab to train youth how to record and document the history of their local neighborhood by using mp3 recorders to interview local elders.
• Organizing blogging workshop for local artisans to help them market their work online, but also tell the story and history of their handicrafts.
  
• Distributing $10 digital cameras to two different groups in different neighborhoods and create a Flickr group where they interact with each other's photographic perspectives of their city.”