Dear Global Voices Reader,
We’d like to ask you to support our work for 2010 with a financial contribution.
If you’ve been following the activity on the Global Voices, Global Voices Advocacy and Rising Voices sites, or on any of our 17 active translation sites, you’ll have experienced the incredible energy and array of viewpoints that citizen media can bring to the coverage of global stories. Our diverse and growing community of 350 writers and translators come from all over the world, and provide trusted perspectives on local stories for global audiences. They offer a window into other worlds, helping readers gain a deeper understanding of unfamiliar communities and stories.
2009 has been a great year for us. We’ve launched innovative new projects that explore the boundaries of citizen media, such as our Translation Exchange research initiative; our online freedom of expression advocacy platform, Threatened Voices; and RuNet Echo, our Russian blogosphere project. We’ve just embarked on a new collaborative research project, the Transparency and Technology Network, and a new online freedom of expression award called Breaking Borders, in collaboration with Google. This year we’ve also worked on developing alternative sources of revenue, leveraging the collective expertise of our community to help organizations like UNFPA and IDRC to bring a citizen perspective to their offerings.
Global Voices community members at the 2008 Summit in Budapest. Image by mentalacrobatics.
At the end of five years of existence, it’s also been exhilarating to read posts from our founders and contributors expressing what being part of our community means to them. “Global Voices is. . . my go-to place when I want to find the light at the end of the tunnel, the reason to not despair when mankind sputters as it moves along its tumultuous journey,” writes our Madagascar contributor Lova Rakotomala, who spent much of this year writing about the turmoil in his home country. “Because, amidst all the gravity of the situation described there, you see people living. You see people trying to share the stories of their lives. They tell you not to feel bad for them but to support them, as friends, not as moral obligation. They don’t ask for help or aid, they are looking for a solution that you may help provide because you too have lived through your share of struggles.”
Lova Rakotomala presenting at Barcamp Madagascar in July 2009. Image by rl_lita.
We’ve been lucky to have the help of several generous donors, some of whom will continue to assist us into 2010. But we still need the support of our readers to make Global Voices a success. We run our projects with a great deal of volunteer effort, but need help to support our editorial structure, our development and freedom of speech advocacy work, and our technical infrastructure—and also future development and innovation.
Your donation to Global Voices will make possible broader coverage of local perspectives and voices, and help diversify the information all of us receive. In a time of shrinking newsrooms and the closing of foreign news desks, citizen media is proving to be vital for quality global news coverage.
Please contribute if you can. $25, $50, $100—any amount you can give helps us become a more sustainable organization.
Donations can be made through PayPal via the button below:
or through the Media Development Loan Fund‘s digital kiosk. If you have any questions, please visit our Donate page or e-mail us at georgiap at globalvoicesonline.org.
We thank you for a splendid 2009, and wish you a 2010 filled with joy and peace.
– Georgia Popplewell and Ivan Sigal
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