FOKO Blog Club : TIMELINE

 

 

FOKO was founded by 4 Malagasy bloggers (Harinjaka, Joan, Lova and Mialy) living abroad and the Blog Clubs concept came out very naturally.

Stephane, Andry and Tantely  are from FOKO team present in Madagascar and they are making a tremendious work with the Foko Blog Clubs.

 

FBC-CPO group ,FBC-Tana group,FBC-Mahajanga , FBC-Tamatave : who is blogging where? Members list here

 

 

FBC 11 :

 

Here are our blog updates on Rising Voices : Akory Tamatave - Hello Tamatave

 

•  August 30th

   

• July 22th

Patrick reports :

Foko team andSpotlight Madagascar ( a young non-profit started by 2 former Peace Corps volunteers) have worked very hard together to promote the use of English and environmental activism in Tamatave's region. TheEnglish Club will now join the partnership. This special session was held to help the bloggers post their second and more articles. They are also recommended to read from the FBC community (right) and learn from their peers works.

 

 

• July 17th

Hery is still trying to find a local for his summer workshop where he plans to teach more on video editing and webdesigning. Since most of the groups are in vacation, we have more time to program the sessions for august and september. He already gathered the documentations and tutorials to help them build websites and edit videos.

 

 

• July 14th

Patricia's videoLake of shame won a prize at the 3rd population day contest from TakingITGlobal website ymex.org. She's now on their frontpage as a feature article and her work will be seen by youth all over the world. Stéphane also met the director of UNIC (United Nation Informational Center) to talk about FBC future projects with theUN Club kids.

 

 

• July 13th

Stéphane and Tantely met (and went clubbing .am I allowed to write this here?) after finalizing Foko Blog Club Malagasy legal papers in order to ease our work with more institutions in Madagascar.

 

 

• July 10th

Phone calls to Diana at the hospital brought little scares : Kamba had a convulsion attack which put everyone on alert for the night and an unsolicittated visit from an intrusive journalist was disapproved by Pr Clément. Let's remind here that only Diana was allowed by both Georgine (Kamba's mother) and Pr Clément to cover her story and take pictures. Of course it is quite paradoxal to "control" media so a press conference was officially announced by Pr Clément and will take place on Thursday

The press conference was attended by all the media from national TV to the press and of course radios at 11 am. No one mentioned Diana's speech on her work with Foko Blog Club and how she managed to bring attention to the cause to  focus on the medical achievements which was the purpose of the meeting. The family left everyone heartbroken at the bus station when they decided to suddenly home go to Majunga.Diana is now going to lead FBC Majunga transfering all the great lessons she learned from her blogging at Befelatanana hospital during when taking care of kamba.

 

FBC 10 :

 

 

Here are our blog updates on Rising Voices : FOKO in the heart (foko) of the Malagasy blogosphere

 

• June 27th

Diana finally announced that Baby Kamba was safe. After one week of many attempts to practice the final surgery and because Kamba was too weak, the surgeons finally  succeed in this 8 hours very dangerous procedure. Dizains of bloggers sent mails and relayed the news few minutes after on their blogs.

Stephane was happy about his pupil Diana's progress in blogging and Citizen Media! After days of intensive stress when we made Diana got back home to rest a little and pass her exams at the School of Journalism, she became very independant and published daily updates on the baby with pictures, articles and even a podcast ! This is a very important step at FBC because 3 months ago Lindsay was worried about her students been scared of internet and even after Stephane's trip there in May, they still find blogging difficult. We know now that Diana is ready to pass the relay (she even figured out the best moment of the day  to load pictures :

" slt tous le monde, là on tous a l'hopital tous les etoiles de Kamba sont là,la chambre est même trop petite

bref,c'est fini l'operation,il a plus le truc au milieu du front je vais essayer de vous envoier des photos car je sais maintenant comment les envoier plus vite (c'est le soir,le reseau est moins flou)

mille bizou ici on est super contente"

"Hi everyone! Everybody is at the hospital and Kamba stars are filling his tiny room. The operation is over, he doesnt have the thing on his fronthead anymore I will try to send you more pictures because now I know when to publish them (during evening and nights )"

 

 

Lova and Mialy were doing an amazing work in Budapest bringing our voices to our Global Voices friends. They had 2 panels with our bloggers work : The Rising Voices experience with Bolivia, Columbia and Kenya. The Rising VoicesMialy will blog us about it later. And the Cyclone Ivan intensive citizen media experience when videos and news from FBC contributors were relayed to the world. It was the very first time Malagasy webmasters and internauts heard about our blogging workshops and their incredible potentials. We tested the connexion in Tamatave and few minutes of Lova 's presentation was watched by the FBC floks, it made them very proud !

 

Stephane wanted to help the Tamatave guyz and finalize their training but also give them the tools and motivation they needed to stay with us and blog more. He met Patrick the head of the English Club who started his blog back in February. They planned a 3 days workshop :

1-Blog editing : to teach the basics to the new bloggers

2-Pictures and Podcasting and more blog publishing : to show them there were more than writings, they also appreciated the first comments (Joan took care of this).

3- Introduction to the blogosphere...which didn't happen because of technical problems at the cyber , you guesses right : Power outtage! But again it was another occasion to discuss about Foko and Citizen Media around a well deserved chinese noodle soup (Tamatave best dish) : http://theophilusman.wordpress.com/, http://hkambora.wordpress.com/, http://clairesttuburn.wordpress.com/, http://violance.wordpress.com, http://bodoundjan.wordpress.com, http://hanitra085.wordpress.com

 

 

• June 21th

Cyberfety on Foko Chatroom,Patricia and her friends showed up and got their chances at sharing their amazing Foko Blog Club experience to the Malagasy blogosphere who appreciated their activism, talents (in malagasy at least!) and of course the representation of Malagasy youth they. Patricia showcased a very strong personality and generosity (at only 16!)

 

 

• June 19th

Silo, a famous musician in Madagascar, invited the Foko bloggers in Tamatave to cover his very original show :Sans-Fil. With the help of the municipality and telecommunication sponsors (Orange Madagascar) He wanted to diffuse his shows live on internet. Of course the pictures will be online when the load shedding allow us to...

 

 

• June 15th

Bad news from Hery : the cybercafé won't lend us their room for free(it's normally 50$/hour internet connection not included)...We planned summer sessions for intensive web and technology  teaching with the most motivated bloggers. We're still looking for solutions.

 

• June 14th

Stephane and Tantely connected to Skype to not talk about Foko ! These kind of moment are rare (because none of them have internet at home) and we enjoyed it very much.

 

• June 11th

Diana is having hard difficulties managing her time in Antananarivo. Patricia  from FBC came by to see Kamba and offer their help to the family. This meeting with 3 "powerful" FBC bloggers is a good sign of the success of our work on the ground. We want more interactions between the bloggers without the coordinators interventions.

 

• June 06th

The web page to collect donations for Baby Kamba, Diana's cause was launched atzaza-vavy (a collectif of Malagasy blogging for infancy and women founded by foko coordinators). We chose this strategy to leave to Diana more time to only promote her actions and not to get involved in financial echues  (which was not appropriate at her young age,17, and ethical as a future journalist)

 

 

FBC 9 :

 

 

Here are our blog updates on Rising Voices : Congratulations Foko Blog Club Class of 2008 !

 

• May 30th (Foko 2.0!)

Foko Flickr account is now open to all Madagascar bloggers. Avylavitra's personal album is waiting for your comments, he was waiting for this occasion for months and thanks to his commitment to FBC, you'll see more about Malagasy lifestyle and the wonders of our country.

Diana and soonPatricia have their own Twitter account now. This micro-blogging platform is very practical for bloggers who don't have the time and money to frequently post on their blogs. We're hoping to expand this experience to more bloggers within the next months.

 

 

• May 29th

2 new bloggers http://tonkataly.wordpress.com/ and http://ysiastella.wordpress.com/ from Majunga AND  PARTNERSHIP WITH MAJUNGA SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM is OFFICIAL!

M. Vita is the Director of the School where Lindsay Redifer teached photography and english classes and trained our first FBC with her 8 students. He was , which son Jelly is now helping logistically, was so impressed but our passion and the progress of our Foko network and accepted our offer to train more students to blogging. 3 blogs were opened during the improvised workshop where we distributed our (now very famous) signature t-shirts . Now that the class has finally received theur digital camera and connection hours, we're waiting for more news from Majunga!

 

 

• May 28th

Stéphane met Max, a retiring state officer,   who is helping Diana helping Kamba family.They discussed on the next trip to Anatananarivo and the future expenses. Joan took last week-end to meet in person the Ottawa couple (friends of Max) who teamed with her raising more than 1000$ from the 3000$ needed for the operation. Malagasy blogosphere, webmasters  and now journalists based in Madagascar are intensively relaying this cause.

 

 

• May 24th

Bloggers gathered to receive their prizes during a dinner sponsored by Foko and with the presence a blogger from the Diaspora who supported FBC from the beginning. The coordinators in place invited also the blogosphere to connect to the chatroom and support them virtually while everybody was busy enjoying their soda at Urban Café in Antananarivo. The Namana Serasera, our big brothers, were present and also brought gifts to the young bloggers!

 

• May 17th

Cylnice and Zouboon texts accepted by the Madagascar English Journal with this kind emails by Annelie Rozeboom :

Hello Joan,

I just finished to edit the articles. They were really cute. I love it when people from the street get interviewed about their lives.

Do you think it’s possible to send a picture of the taxi driver and the child? As they are very personal stories, it would be nice to have a picture,

Please let me know,

Thanks again,

 

Annelie

 

FBC 8 :

 

Here are our blog updates on Rising Voices :

Backstage with the Foko coordinators in three Malagasy cities.

Lindsay Redifer, FOKO Blog Club’s First Vidcasts, the Majunga School of Journalism, the mini blogging contest, …

 

• May 10th :

Lindsay and Mialy met in Washington DC and are catching up on Foko Blog Clubs stories. Especially from Majunga where the future journalists are longing for their connection hours. Stéphane has made contact with Jelly from Majunga School of Journalism to train him in becoming the new FBC Majunga coordinator. His trip to Majunga is being planned by Foko at the moment (let us remind you guyz that Majunga is about 500km from Antananarivo and Stephane  wants to make a 2-day trip by car...!!)

• May 7th :

Rondro article on Tromba selected for Madagascar English Journal. Annellie our contact is amazed by her maturity and writing skills and is waiting for new submissions on Foko special column everyone will have the chance to contribute and even non anglophone writers will be translted. Half of the money will go directly to Rondro in Majunga and the other half to her group all in connection hour. The Journal will send us a scan of our article in a very short time.

• May 5th :

From Christian (future Toamasina tutor trained by Stephane) :

SLT SLT!!!!

comment ca va, ny vao2 aty dia zay vao vita daholo ny blog ny ankizy aty.Mazoto be ireo nampianarina na dia efa tara kely aza 3 blogs aloha no natao fa alefa tsikeliky .ireto avy ny blog vita:

Hi everybody! how is everything? I have great news for you all, the youth here are very motivated and we teached blogging to 3 of them. We know we've started very slowly but you'll see more coming from Toamasina!

Zida01.wordpress.com, Layshiyuu.wordpress.com, Ledhada.wordpress.com

Patrick the head of the local English Club is excited and will very soon join the bloggers squad!

 

 

• May 3rd :

The amazing movement to support Diana's personal initiative to help the little baby from Majunga is one of Malagasy blogosphere first try to team together. The chatroom scheduled on May 3rd was attented by 5 bloggers who will be committed full-time on this task. We chose to let Diana decide on the strategies and just give her our advices and material support. Of course Diana will keep on posting about the ups and downs of her ground actions.

 

• April 28th

Tears of Joy? during the mini-blogging contest we receive great reactions from the winners but we didn't predict that this kind of emulation could bring deceptions and maybe demotivation...

 

 

FBC 7 :

 

Here are our blog updates on Rising Voices :From simple blogger to citizen journalist, We do whatever it takes

 

 

• April 26th 2008

Karenichia and Patie were responsibles of  the FBC workshop! They brought 4 new bloggers and will teach the basics to these Guiding groups from Antananarivo.We already know them from the Club for UN video and they're from the capitale's most prestigious high-schools like Lycée Jules Ferry and Lycée Rabearivelo. http://tintine.wordpress.com/ -http://witched.wordpress.com/">http://witched.wordpress.com/ - http://andovahin.wordpress.com/ - http://naydou.wordpress.com/

Lindsay Redifer is leaving Madagascar this month so all the FBC membres and FOKO team celebrated her departure by interviewing her and giving her little souvenires from M/car. What she's accomplished was really phenomenal and her love and dedication for Malagasy people will always be in our minds.

 

• April 20th 2008

A very good day for Foko Blog Club as more than 6 bloggers reached the 6 minimum posts to enter our mini-blogging contest. Karenichia, Pati, Avylavitra, Lomelle, Diana, Rondro and Poupoune posted the most interesting articles and pictures. Let's not forget about the other members from Toamasina, Majunga and Tananarive who are doing great too.

 

• April 15th 2008

Lomelle, Rondro, Diana, Zouboom,  MielManja, Cylnice, Jombilo from Majunga surprised us with dizains of new posts on their brand new blogs. Lindsay who is back up north has done an amazing jog helping them ! Many topics we don't find among the pro bloggers were written and what is most surprising?? Is that most of them are trilingual! FromMalagasy to English to French, we see Madagascar from a new and different perspective. The posts are now categorized on our del.i.cious page. 

 

•  April 13th  2008

The deadline is approaching, The video aren't uploaded yet, panic !Patie: Rakotomalala Patricia and Nombana: Rasolofonirina Nombana are the participants. They took 2 days to take the videos in downtown Antananarivo. (we mentioned earlier that they had to prepare a mini-scenario on their issue) The post-production work was done 70% by themselves, they recorded their voices to fit the podcast with the images (amazing voices by the way).   There were of course the problems of loading which took us a lot of networking to find fast and reliable internet connection. it took...4hours...for both videos. You can find the videos here :

Patricia produces : ANKARIHARY - the Lake of Shame

Nombana Produces “DOMINIQUE, SAKAIZAN’NY LALANA”

 

• April 5rd 2008

Message from Stéphane :

Pati and Nombana were diligently listening to Lindsay's video taking lessons downtown Antananarivo. They took multiple videos from their subjects and are very excited to learn about video editing (scheduled on April 9th with Hery). It is very interesting to be a reporter but you encounter many dangers too. I'll send you more photos and videos from our adventures.

Hery has been working with Joan (online) to prepare the video editing and ...the very painful part of the workshop = the uploads....

 

 

•     April 3rd 2008

Lindsay from Mahajanga and Poupoune from Toamasina are Teknet in Antananarivo meeting Stéphane and Hery. [ note : We'll post regularly our updates since there is a lot going on around the FBC]

 

•     April 1st 2008

Message from Lindsay (Mahajanga) :

We got cut off from our connection yesterday, so we just developed some story ideas and a couple students went to get interviews. Saltouna, our Commorrian student, is talking to some people working to supply our neighboring islands with clothing and food. Jelly, our crime reporter, is writing about the lack of sellers in the new market due to high rates for table space. Roza, our mid-wife, is working on an article about her experiences working with new mothers in the hospital. We'll get online whenever we can. The students have online accounts now, thanks to the grant, so that makes it a lot easier to get the work done.

 

CPO students  have already prepared their mini-scenarii (for the Video Contest). Also there is a huge pressure for the FBC Contest we launched on February (when the minimum submission is to write 6 posts) which is ending on April 26th. Avylavitra, Karenichia, Pati and Poupoune are now posting one article per day (or 2 days) and are improving on the autonomy and skills levels.

FBC members seem to enjoy more and more the use of Flickr. The Foko album became the best way for coordinators to stay in touch and of course where they can post spontaneous comments on each others' work. With new pictures from Toamasina (online tutoring works very well!) from Poupoune, we're considering to give this plate-form more accessibility and ...space!

 

• March 31st 2008

Hery was summoned by his UNIC boss (UN Informational Center) to start working on the Film your Issue Contest ! It is also the last step to officialize FOKO's partnership with the UNIC network !!!!  (they host the CPO=Club for UN associations weekly meetings)

Thanks to the hard work of Hery and Stéphane, FBC workshops can extend to new high-schools, other provinces, more activities...

 

 

FBC 6 :

 

Here are our blog updates on Rising Voices :When members take control of the FBC

 

•        March 22th, 2008

Tamatave's team managed very well on their own. As usual the power went off many times in town and 2 of the new bloggers coulnd't finalize their posts. Faliniaina's address and email was sent by texting (Foko team is exchanging at least 2 phone texts a day between North America and Madagascar)!

Lindsay in Mahajanga and her students from the School of Journalism were also starting at the same time! Since it was an introduction to blogging, they only managed to open Lomelle's blog but next week we'll get more news and stories from FBC-Mahajanga during the 2nd workshop.

FBC-Tananarive's workshop was an occasion forAvylavitra to talk about his Flickr and Youtube experience. Then everyone had the task to post comments and write a new article.It was a very light but fun workshop because of the Easter holidays.

 

•        March 19th, 2008

The Film Issue Contest invitation was announced on wednesday's Club for UN meeting (CPO students meet Hery every week at UNIC for their extr-scholar activities). The bloggers from CPO Jules Ferry immediatly accepted the challenge (they were the ones who took the Open Doors at Jules Ferry video) but we are still waiting for more to join. The first task for next week is to write a very light scenario of the video.

 

•        March 14th, 2008

The cameras went to the FBC-CPO for their first take at videos. Many pictures were published from the Open Doors at Jules Ferry event and Hery  and Stéphane helped a little on the final montage  but they managed to update their blog on their own.

Lindsay from FBC-Mahajanga found a webdesigner friend,Toky to help her start the workshop with 3 students of the School of Journalism.

 

•       March 7th, 2008

Poupoune our 1st blogger from FBC-Tamatave went in Majunga on vacation. The cities are 800km apart and it was a chance for us to learrn more about our new friends from FBC-Mahajanga. They shared their difficulties to get internet connexion from the provinces and scheduled together the 1st workshop for March 22nd.

 

 

 

FBC 5 :

Here is our blog updates on Rising Voices :Planting trees, Cyclone Ivan and FOKO

 

                                                                      New Voices from the Provinces and High School Students

 

        March, 1st 2008

 

• Hery from Namana Serasera Association promised to bring us his special class. The Workshop was a total success ! 10 teenagers came from Antananarivo's high schools associations

As soon as we told them about the FBC Contest, the posts were written very quickly !

 

 

        February, 24rd 2008

 

• Stéphane went to Tamatave to introduce the FBC at Orange Internet Cafe where we previously put posters with the help of friends in town.

Despite the black-outs, he succeeded in training 4 new  bloggers (poupoune, ianluc, lafatra and Christian)

        February, 23rd 2008

 

• Andry took care of Antananarivo's FBC when the few bloggers who braved the heavy rain.

The blogosphere was connected to the chatroom and formed a commentors committee for the Blog Contest we also launched.

 

February, 19rd 2008

 

• Cyclone IVAN caused damages and destructions, the bloggers were very fast to post pictures on Flickr and alert everyone. It also helped us evaluate the potentiality of our Media Citizen network

 

February, 9rd 2008

 

• Andranovelona, Tree Planting Event

This is an annual tree planting event for the Namana Serasera Association, they invited Stephane and Tantely to join the troops and recommand them to take videos and pictures. Everybody enjoyed their time !

 

 

FBC 4 :

Here are our blog updates on Rising Voices :Bringing Malagasy forumists to blogging

 

        January, 26th 2008

 

• 4 bloggers from the precedent editions were present  : Avylavitra, Sasa, FcCandy and RmStephy

They learned to post the photos they took during the holidays on their blogs and also to comment on each others blogs. Avylavitra met the team the week after to learn how to post on Flickr and Youtube.

• and 2 new additions : Nombana and Rina

They learned to open a Wordpress blog and write their first post. (we also give our members the option to keep their blog private and in these we didn't record Nombana and Rina's addresses)

• Hery a member of Namana Serasera association took the initiatives to promote the FBC at his workplace : the UNIC (UN informational Center) and enrolled high-school students for the next FBC.

 

 

The first edition happened on October 20th 2007, it was the day the Springboks won the Rugby  World Cup ! This experience made us realize the potential of Media Citizen in Madagascar. Second edition went on November 24th 2007, Teknet, which is the most equipped cybercafe, offered us their support to initiate 10 new bloggers. Namana Serasera Association joined us on the project at this moment and they were anguishly waiting for the Rising Voices grants annoucement in December !! Stephane, Andry and Tantely were already ready for action ..

 

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