Global Voices Advocacy

When my fellow blogger living in Budapest, Jez Wegierski, posted about attending Global Voices summit somehow I didn’t think about checking the organisation behind that event (even though I AM interested in events). I have just come across this very informative and extremely active portal now, and I must say I am well impressed. GlobalVoices is a large portal containing several sub-projects. Apart from the translation sites, I found the Global Voices Advocacy the most interesting one. It not only contains quite adequate data and insights on free speech online but actually suggests a tool to fight for it in those countries where some sites are banned.

Have a look at their 403 checker – it’s a free to download tool helping to track back what sites were banned on one’s pc. Also, some of those are included in the Access Denied Map. This is the type of info you do not find easily, here publicly available. I like when people bravely talk about issues and face the word with facts! Well done!
So, considering some involvement myself, I have contacted them asking about the aim of the site, and got a response from person called Portnoy: ‘The main goal of Lingua and GV is to balance the world’s information flow biased by MSM and with the help of more than 200 volunteers we have to build a citizen media community based on bloggers around the world.
We tackle the 3 obstacles(censorship, digital divide, and language) toward a true global village with Global Voices Advocacy, Rising Voices, and Lingua. You can read more info here’
That is exactly what social media should do, don’t you think?