Over the last month Small World News launched a series of sites on the http://alive.in network to address the unprecedented changes sweeping the arab world.
Alive.in/egypt, alive.in/libya, alive.in/bahrain and alive.in/iraq were driven by the pressing needs of democratic movements to communicate the reality of events actively denied by authoritarian governments and state-run media. Because of Facebook, Twitter and other new media platforms like Alive.in, the brutality of state responses to peaceful demonstration could no longer be repressed.
We were awed by the response of both nationals and expatriates to our work, which would have been impossible without reports sent in from demonstrators on the ground via Speak2Tweet and the long hours of work by volunteer translators to relay the reports of their countrymen to the world.
Now we are working overtime to stregthen alive.in/ projects in place and create new ones as the conditions arise. Our primary concern now, as it has always been, is building a network of contacts in areas of crisis, often with low bandwidth and high barriers to trust.
Without local trust and adoption alive.in will fulfill a small part of what we see as a glaring need. Our previous projects have filled a variety of niches in the needs not only in the area of foreign news, but also humanitarian support, and improving the capability of global citizens to comprehend their world and gain a broader perspective to make opinions and build a global community.
Alive in Baghdad, our first venture, brought the images of the Iraqi street and helped humanize the Iraqi people by enabling several journalists and filmmakers to tell their stories and those of their neighbors and fellow citizens.
Alive in Mexico was short-lived, lasting just one year, but we feel provided a great deal of insight into Mexican culture and radical politics, elements missing from the American discussion of Mexico in particular and international news in general.
In 2009 we launched 4 experiments with a variety of success. Alive in Gaza enabled the international community to hear directly from a gazan correspondent and pose questions via twitter and comments. Alive in Honduras was an initial partnership withhablahonduras.org, providing English translation to their content and others about the response to an attempted coup, while Alive in Tehran provided security information and a place for Iranians to record statements to the world via phone.
2009 ended with the launch of our first mapping initiative, leveraging Ushahidi to add context and breadth to the international community’s understanding of the Afghan Presidential election. Our work helped expose the extent of corruption while other media outlets were still hailing Afghanistan’s democracy and alleged lack of violence during the election.
Over 2010 we engaged in a broad expanse of projects: helping start a daily news program produced by Indian community activists; training Ethiopian journalists in exile to protect themselves online; supporting Rwandans with new media training; training Iraqi civil society organizations and technologists to develop a strategy and implement social media and mapping tools, teaching Afghan journalists to leverage the latest in mobile journalism tools; supporting an international monitoring organization and local humanitarian one to leverage mobile technology and mapping to monitor the Afghan parliamentary election; working with Bahraini human rights activists to develop tools to monitor their parliamentary election; and training Tibetan and Indian activists to leverage video as a tool to promote their work.
Today we hope to utilize the breadth of our work over the last five years to continue creating a space for voices go regularly unheard by the international community. This means centralizing the fragmented locations where dialogue is happening, and making sure those voices are curated and contextualized, as well as translated to English and other languages when necessary. It also means meeting with local contacts, providing training and equipment and infrastructure support as necessary. In a place like Afghanistan it may even involve coordinating with telecommunications companies as we’ve done previously, or developing methods that better prioritize the most accessible tools, such as voice and mobile platforms particularly in rural and low bandwidth communities.
I also want to publicly express my heartfelt thanks and gratitude that I have for all of you who have helped.. In particular Rooni, Eman, Aaron, Habib, and Sara, as well as our countless translators and other supporters. You all joined us out of the goodness of your heart and the desire to make an impact just over one short month ago when the people of Egypt needed assistance.
We are now taking our first trip to meet with locals and try to develop systems for collaboration in Egypt and Libya. Over the next few weeks Brian Conley and Louis Abelman will be in the region meeting with local citizens, citizen media makers, journalists, and activists.
We will be documenting our trip with regular updates and hope this will lead to developing initial systems for expanding the capacity of alive.in/ to be a space for the international community to monitor issue such as Egypts transition to democracy and provide greater context to the uprisings elsewhere in the region.
We are actively seeking partners to broaden the network and appreciate any support or contacts you may provide. Please email us via if you’re interested in participating, particularly supporting a project in a specific location or translating content.
You can follow our trip via twitter and keep an eye on smallworldnews .com and at our personal blogs: Brian Conley (http://brianconley.info) and Louis Abelman (, http://louisabelman.com)
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