Global Voices Online

Early this May, I went to a conference at the Human Rights Center of the University of California in Berkeley. It was a great program and luckily most of the panels got videotaped, because for sure you could never attend more than one of the interesting panels at a time. Just about a week ago, I was reminded of that conference, when my boss told me to watch the panel on 'Blogging Human Rights' for a project we are working on at the moment. I did not attend that session back then, because I went to the one on collecting data with PDAs and phones instead.

So watching said video on blogging HR i learnt about Global Voices Online and have been intrigued ever since. In principle, Global Voices connects the blogospheres of different countries with each other to enhance a debate across national frontiers and foreign languages. I can only urge you to make sure to check it out! They also have the lingua project to translate blogposts if you prefer to read in something else than English. Personally, i like that the Global Voices team also seeks to teach their skills to others interested in digital advocacy. Hence, you can learn about useful digital tools or receive guidance on how to use a blog for your own activism.

If you ask me this is a truly amazing project. Once you delve into the realms of Global Voices, i dare say you are likely to spend hours under water and become a true digital aquanaut with quickly increasing lung capacity. You can paddle via topics or countries and discover fascinating new lands you did not even know they existed. Personally, i get the impression that by reading only i start connecting myself with a global community of human spirit whose intensity and size seems quite breathtaking.

And it looks like the concept and community of Global Voices will continue to grow. They are constantly adopting new languages and the Director of Outreach of Rising Global Voices, David Sasaki, who is the final speaker of the 'Blogging Human Rights' session mentioned above - and who also maintains an inspiring personal blog btw -, seems to be on one single world trip to spread the word and knowledge. So, the sooner you start to click your way through all these links here, the faster the community will grow one click at a time.