Global Voices: a Q&A with Sylwia Presley

Claire Thompson. freelance PR Consultant, Waves PR

I asked Sylwia Presley, a Twestival, about her work with Global Voices (http://globalvoicesonline.org/) In her own words….

Sylwia Presley

What is Global Voices?

Global Voices is a community of citizen journalists, bloggers and other professionals from all around the world who aggregate opinions on current events from blogs and citizen media worldwide. The main website, located here, is where Global Voices authors track the use of online media in their countries  and write reports of online reactions to events in their region. These stories are written in English.

Global Voices Lingua has a separate platform, where we translate posts written in English into more than 18 other languages. This provides a bridge between communities who do not speak the same languages. Basically a blogger in China can write something in their own blog, which we translate into English on Global Voices and I later on translate to Polish on Global Voices in Polish. This process allows us to deliver information very often overseen by mainstream media.

Global Voices Lingua has a separate platform, where posts written in English are translated into our local languages. This provides the bridge between communities who do not speak languages – basically a blogger in China can post something which we post in English and I later on translate to Polish. This process allows us to deliver information very often overseen by mainstream media.

The third main project, GV Advocacy focuses on actual work to help detained bloggers and fight for freedom of speech. Advocacy inckudes responsibility for the Threatened Voices portal, mapping out, both geographically as well as historically, violations  of freedom of speech.

The Rising Voices project delivers solutions for communities where freedom of expression is restricted due to poverty, lack of equipment or skills. Here we focus on programmes to educate communities on blogging, technology and social media in general. Rising Voices is very proud and young parent to Technology for Transparency network, bringing together projects working toward improvement of transparency of local authorities and governments.

It is also great community of similarly minded people from various backgrounds, regions, beliefs, united in one cause – voluntary work,. The majority of positions at Global Voices are unpaid. Very few people, those who spend all their time developing the project, are actually on the payroll – and thanks to their hard work we are continuously growing.

Why should we care about it?

I think anyone who is a blogger or citizen journalist appreciates the power of free opinions. Every one who has ever been in touch with mass media knows that its mechanisms differ from free expression of mind on-line – simply because journalistic vision of events is edited, facts need to be checked. Global Voices is priceless because it serves as advocate of subjective, sometimes real time, and, very often, reports that are unavailable to English speaking audiences on events around the world.

It is a network of committed people (who spend their free time FOR FREE) who care for values without actual financial reward. It’s also a network of professionals from different regions, which means an extremely valuable knowledge pool for any emergency, crisis, but also good causes. Increasingly Global Voices is becoming a valuable source of information for mainstream media too.

What do you do for Global Voices?

I am an author, which means I post in English about my homeland, Poland. I am also editor of GV Lingua Poland, where our team of Polish translators delivers articles to our Polish speaking audience. Recently I also posted for GV Advocacy due to the recent proposal by the Polish government to introduce a law restricting access to the Internet: the discussion on censorship which kicked off afterwards  continues to date.

How can people get involved?

Give us an hour or so of their time to post and article or translate it into other languages or simply spread the word about us. We work with different organisations around the world joining their commitment to common causes, and we hope that more exposure will lead to larger team of brilliant people. It really is rewarding to be a part of Global Voices.

Read our articles, and support us with your own opinions – comment!:). If you think we should cover something, let us know!
You will find us on Twitter and Facebook, amongst other places)
Feel free to refer to our site – we love to be useful!

What’s the one thing you would like people to do after reading this?

Go to our site, start reading, and consider helping out. We welcome everyone, literally everyone, who cares about the values I mentioned before.

A reminder of the web address: http://globalvoicesonline.org/

1 Comment

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  By Sylwia Presley, February 2, 2010 @ 11:34 pm

  Thank you Claire!

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