Global Voices

Objectives

When Global Voices was formed, Its objectives were: first, to enable and empower a community of "bridge bloggers" who "can make a bridge between two languages, or two cultures." Second to develop tools and resources to make achieving the first objective more effective. It has maintained a working relationship with mainstream media. Reuters, for example, gave Global Voices unrestricted grants from 2006 to 2008. For its contribution to innovation in journalism, Global Voices was granted the 2006 Knight-Batten Grand Prize. Global Voices was also recognized in 2009 with the University of Denver's Anvil of Freedom award for contributions to journalism and democracy.

The organization stated its goals as of 2012:

• "Call attention to the most interesting conversations and perspectives emerging from citizens' media around the world by linking to text, photos, podcasts, video and other forms of grassroots citizens' media."
• "Facilitate the emergence of new citizens' voices through training, online tutorials, and publicizing the ways in which open-source and free tools can be used safely by people around the world".
• "Advocate for freedom of expression ... and protect the rights of citizen journalists".

Global Voices achieves these goals through four key initiatives:

Newsroom: The multilingual newsroom team reports on people whose voices and experiences are rarely seen in mainstream media. Global Voices has a team of regional editors that aggregates and selects conversations from a variety of blogospheres, with a particular focus on non-Western and underrepresented voices. Contributors are volunteers.

Translation: The Lingua volunteers make stories available in dozens of languages to ensure that language is not a barrier to understanding.

Advocacy: The Advox team defends free speech online, paying special attention to legal, technical and physical threats to people using the internet to speak out in the public interest.

Empowerment: Rising Voices provides training and mentorship to local underrepresented communities who want to tell their own stories using participatory media tools.

Global Voices has a community blog for Global Voices contributors to share stories. It also has special projects from time to time such as the Civic Media Observatory.

Services: Expert translation, editorial, and mentorship services from a global community, fuelling the Global Voices non-profit mission.