Rising Voices Micro-Grants for NGOs and Individuals

Deadline: 9 April 2014

Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Stichting Global Voices, an organization incorporated in the Netherlands has announced the call for proposals for the 2014 Rising Voices Microgrant Competition – a funding opportunity for small NGOs and individuals working in the area of citizen media.

Rising Voices supports people in sharing knowledge and skills about citizen media for digital storytelling and citizen participation. Since 2007, it has supported 40 small-scale citizen media projects with funding and mentoring and welcomed them to the Global Voices community.

These projects have helped local leaders introduce new and underrepresented voices to the global digital conversation, shining a light on issues that are important to their own communities.

Rising Voices seeks proposals that share our mission of using online citizen media as a tool for self-empowerment, understanding between people, and social change.

The current call is looking for proposals which:

1. Actively engage members of a local community that is “underrepresented” online, either demographically, linguistically, or geographically. We are especially looking to support leaders who themselves belong to these communities and know how and why citizen media could benefit community members. If the applicant is not a member of the community, local residents or community members must be a part of developing and implementing the project.

2. Provide training, mentoring and leadership. We want project leaders who are eager to share their knowledge and skills with others. Through hands-on training in citizen media production and storytelling techniques, participants will feel equipped and confident to take full advantage of the tools. Ongoing support is essential in the formation of a productive digital storytelling community.

3. Tell digital stories about issues important to the community. After participants take part in training workshops they are ready to share their voices with the world. We are looking for stories that give insight to the community, their challenges or successes, told from a uniquely personal perspective.

4. Use free and widely available citizen media tools and social media platforms. This may include blogs, microblogs like Twitter, free software like Audacity for editing audio, SoundCloud, Audioboo, or Radioteca. Video sites like YouTube and Vimeo, or mapping with OpenStreetMaps. You might also consider using social networking sites like Facebook to distribute your content.

For more information, visit this link. or click Here