I recently had an idea about creating a website called “Tell the World” that would provide a platform for people from from all walks of life from all over the globe to answer the question “What do you want to tell the world?” I imagined the answers would take the form of short videos or audio recordings and that content would be recorded by camera-carrying backpackers and intrepid travelers as well as by local folks with access to the required tech and media resources. I thought it might be a brilliant means of providing local and mostly unheard voices access to a global stage- connecting the particular with the universal, the most immediate and real with the largest possible audience.

Like most good ideas, it already exists. Or at least something like it.

Global Voices Online
Global Voices “aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore.” The Global Voices website provides a central platform for bloggers from all over the world to have their voices heard. Many write covertly from countries with strict limitations on speech, facing the risk of violence or imprisonment should they be found out. Global Voices offers instructions and resources for cyber-dissidents, showing them how to keep writing and getting the truth out even under the harsh strictures of state censorship. The result is a collection of eye-witness accounts, opinions, and conversations from some of the most volatile and repressed places in the world.

Rising Voices is a Global Voices project that “aims to extend the benefits and reach of citizen media by connecting online media activists around the world and supporting their best ideas.” Rising Voices sponsors projects that provide local groups around the world access to new media tools such as blogs, podcasts, online video, and digital photography to “engage in an unmediated conversation which transcends borders, cultures, and differing languages”. Some of the fruit of their labors can be seen in the Videos section of the site.

Voices without Votes is another Global Voices project that aggregates global perspectives and commentary about the US elections from people living outside the United States. If you want to know how the world views our political process and our proposed candidates, have a look

The Global Voices collection is just one of dozens of initiatives advocating citizen media on the global stage. We have an incredible opportunity here that we need to encourage and protect. We as global citizens can harness the tools of the digital/internet age to give voice to the voiceless, to bear witness to repressed or ignored realties, to document forgotten histories, and to give normal people around the globe an opportunity to “Tell the World” what needs to be heard.

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