I’m new here, but really interested in the topic. My name is Eddie Avila and I’m the Director of Rising Voices, an initiative of Global Voices. We work to support new, diverse, and underrepresented voices as they use participatory digital media to tell their own stories on their own terms.

A special interest of ours centers on how the Internet is helping communities create new digital content in their native languages. Whether through blogs, digital video, social media, or audio podcasts, we are seeing inspiring work by people committed towards preserving and revitalizing their native languages. 

Starting with an activity last year in Mexico  we brought together indigenous language “digital activists” to share their experiences  and teach and learn from one another.

Here, we partnered with our friends from Wikimedia Mexico to help organize the sessions around creating new or translating existing content into Wikipedia in native languages. We felt that Wikimedia shares our mission of supporting communities to be able to share their knowledge online in their own languages. 

Now, we are continuing this process with a workshop in Bogotá in a couple of weeks. Again, we are partnering with both Wikimedia Colombia and Wikimedia Venezuela to showcase the possibilities of creating versions of Wikipedia in native languages and building a more mutually supportive network.

We are eager to explore how Rising Voices can help support the ongoing work of communities around the world, but especially throughout Latin America, that are interested in contributing or creating their own versions of this important resource. Our partnerships with your communities have been incredibly rewarding.

Looking forward to seeing how we can continue to work together.

Thanks,

Eddie Avila

@barrioflores @risingvoices