PROJECT TITLE: Video/Barrio

YOUR NAME: Álvaro Ramírez and a team of voluntary associates

TITLE: Associate Professor

YOUR ORGANIZATION: Dept of Information Science and Media Studies. U. of Bergen, Norway

Blog: http://otexto.net

Why are you seeking Rising Voices funding? How will your project benefit the community you are targeting? (100 words)

We apply because we lack the necessary funding to do the work in a responsible way. We began planning this in April and a team of young enthusiasts (in Medellin) have volunteered to participate in the training sessions and the follow up of the work for 5 months. “La Loma de San Javier” is very poor neighbourhood but their cultural achievements are outstanding thanks to the leadership and dedication of Guillermo Alvarez. Having access to blogs this community will be able to better share their cultural capital with others. By empowering a small group with the skills and equipment needed we hope they will raise awareness and social participation inside the barrio.

What kinds of news, stories, information and other content will your project provide? Describe your vision for the content. (250 words)

Within the videoclip format we will propose the workshop participants to develop a series of reporting genres:

1. Portraits of people. Interview techniques will be taught oriented to show what people do for living or as contributors to the community (brickmakers, singers, electricians, actors)

2. Short clips on how aware people are around issues of the environment and how they apply them to their daily life.

3. Five from the street. Videobloggers choose a topic of importance or actuality; find and frame an appropriate short question; and go out to find five people who are willing to answer.

4. Engaged rapping. The citizen journalists announce they will be taping performances by kids who create and perform rap melodies of their own creation, where the social and political content will weight more than their singing skills.

5.“Troveros”. A contest is organize were “trovadores” can challenge and compete with each other, in the best old folk tradition, on who is the best troubadour.

6. News. This is a hard one. But we will try to encourage them to pursue them.

7. Culture. A series dedicated to tape and show clips of the unique “sainetes” shown in the barrio.

8. Once the group of journalists have portrayed several people in the barrio they will meet to screen and select those who are “best on camera”. The “chosen” get access a camera during a whole week to record a personal diary. This may result in a very interesting series of self reflections. Editing these projects may be a major task and can be assisted by our staff, or by hired volunteer editors from Medellin Universities TV Network.

Who will generate the content? Who is the target audience? How, and how often, will it be distributed? What language(s) will it be available in? (300 words)


Content will be generated by a trained group of 15 inhabitants in La Loma. They will follow a 10 day course with different on-hands workshops designed to teach them the basic skills around brainstorming ideas, information gathering and story telling necessary to create videoclips about their community and some of their issues. Our hope is that with time and training some of them may be able to show others how to use the equipment and the basic practices of video blogging.

The main target audience are the rest of the people of La Loma. Our aim is that the community may be able to represent itself with its own stories, portraits and ideas. The barrio has an Internet café with 4 stations and we plan to have the course either in the installations of the public school or a recently created tiny municipal library annex. We hope that the old and young generations in the barrio will develop an interest in finding reflections of them in the Internet: a collection of images and memories of the cultural, social and political life of the barrio.

The fact that their neighbours manage to produce and post their clips in their own vlog and in new digital media outlets like equinoXio may have a profound impact in the way they perceive themselves as individuals but also as social group.

The secondary audience are all other Internet individuals or similar groups who happen to be interested in the reporting and stories being gathered by the citizen journalists of La Loma.

What kinds of participation and interaction do you expect from the readers/listeners/viewers of your content? How will you encourage participation? (75 words)

Both their videoblogs and equinoXio have a comment section where people may interact with the published material. We plan to award the most active commentators (only from La Loma) with karma points for each of their comments and give a prize to the 3 top commentators by December 2007 when the project will be assessed and reviewed in order to continue it and possibly expand it to neighbouring barrios.

What is your knowledge of your target community? Why are you the best individual/organization to lead this project? Do you have prior experience in citizen media outreach? (100 words)

Our knowledge resides mainly in Guillermo Álvarez (45) a key person in our team who lives in the barrio and who contributes voluntarily to the cultural life by creating and maintaining a stable musical group and a popular theatre ensemble under the name of “Alma de Antioquia”. There are some more cultural agents like Guillermo who have expressed enthusiasm for the blogging activity. We are very positive about running this as a successful project in this battled poor Medellin barrio. It is going to be our first digital “local” experience with the underprivileged and poor. Our one year “glocal” and successful experience with citizen journalism derives from equinoxio.

Describe what technologies and tools your project will use to produce the content What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs? (100 words)

The videos are targete to be published in equinoXio. But simoultaneously they will create video/barrio's blog in Wordpress. We are looking for an open source software editing tool. Jump Cut is being under scrutiny. In the meantime we rely in the Internet Café since their terminals carry Windows Media editing software. Two people in the team have long experience with blogging. Three other are data engineers and the leader is both filmmaker and teacher of video and multimedia. We need cameras, microphones and a paid internet connection. We hope to get from Global Voices the hosting for their vlog and a probable website dedicated exclusively to promote the activities of Alma de Antioquia.

How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact – on your main participants? Other contributors? on the larger community? How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement? (200 words)

We will measure the impact by the number of videoclips and reports produced during the five month period by the new citizen journalists. We will also pay close attention to the comments received and the reaction of the audiences inside and outside the barrio to the challenge (we expect the to be noticed by the Colombian blogosphere and hopefully in Main Stream Media). We plan to conduct some meetings with both authors and commentators in December to get a more qualitative assessment of their response. If the project kicks off we have considered the possibility of initiating a Media Research project about this experience.

The Department of Information Science and Media studies is at present writing a couple of applications for funds aimed at sponsoring the work of equinoXio and making it a sustainable low cost small media enterprise. The idea is that in the near future equinoXio begins to pay all of its contributors in a similar way as Oh My News does. This will be a tremendous incentive for citizen journalists from La Loma.

What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them? (200 words)

The main challenge so far is dealing with security. La Loma (like some other poor barrios in Medellin) were under the influence of guerrilla groups in the past and in the hands of paramilitary groups until recently. Paramilitaries have surrendered their weapons to the authorities but still continue to have some political presence and hidden influence. This has an impact on the freedom of expression in the barrio as it does in all areas of public life in Colombia, where journalists train themselves to walk on the tightrope of heavy and violent competing interests and agendas. We know the terrain and (after close consultation) are now confident that the videomakers will be able handle any situation that it might arise with sensibility. As soon as they gain enough respect in the community their work will not threatened or tampered.

How do you plan to sustain your project's content after the Rising Voices funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future? (300 words).

We have not had the time to work much on this area. We are working towards the goal of enabling EquinoXio to become the main buyer of their features and news production and the main source of income. We are discussing internally as Open Democracy has put it: “building a 'giving' community online, remaining transparent and avoiding donor exhaustion”. Another alternative we may implement would be Google Adsense.

What resources and support can Rising Voices provide to your project to ensure its success? (200 words)

Hosting server and maintenance. Contact with other groups similar to ours in order to share experiences, problem solving and good alternative ways of making these projects sustainable. We think Rising Voices could become a great network of similar blogging experiences of groups trying to expand participation and freedom of expression in underprivileged regions around the world.

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