When I attended the GV summit I counted myself quite lucky to meet so many bloggers from around the world, including contributors to Global voices online. The gift of a macbook sleeve from Bolivian project ‘Voces Bolivianas’ was one of the many highlights of the summit. It was such a moving gesture that some of us were fighting back tears of appreciation. You see, the Global voices logo was hand-stitched onto the sleeve, and Eduardo and his team lugged this big huge bag all the way from Bolivia to give each one of us a choice between the 15″ sleeve and the smaller 13″ sleeve.

The sleeve is lovely, it is made from traditional Aguayo textile, and I have to admit I treasure mine a whole lot.
You can buy one for yourself, and in the process, help support a very worthwhile project that is reaching out to underrepresented groups in Bolivia, getting them to share their opinions online through the use of blogs and other participatory media.
The colors are just lovely…get one!

PS: Only available in the US…

I am at the Global Voices summit, regarding citizen media, democracy and technology.

I will be covering the following sessions using the live blogging tool CoveritLive on this blog and also on the GV summit blog. Please bookmark the event homepage [summit08.globalvoicesonline.org]
- Twitter feed is [twitter.com]
- The timezone for the live sessions is GMT+1
June 27, 2008
11:30 - 13:00 Session 2: “Citizen Media and Online Free Speech”
MODERATOR: Mary Joyce.
SPEAKERS: Ory Okolloh (Kenyan Blogger), Wael Abbas (MisrDigital, Egypt), Mehdi Mohseni (jomhour.org, Iran), Amine (digiactive.org, Morocco), Oiwan Lam (Global Voices, Hong Kong), Au Wai Pang (Singapore)
Citizen media allow for more active and open participation in political processes, but threats of censorship and oppression discourage citizens from expressing their own opinions. This session will present case studies from Kenya, Iran, Egypt, Morocco, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

15:30 -16:30 Session 4: “Frontline Activists meet the Academy: Tools and Knowledge”
MODERATOR: Ethan Zuckeman.
SPEAKERS: Roger Dingledine (Tor), Nart Villeneuve (Citizen Lab), Isaac Mao (Digital Nomads project, China), Robert Guerra (Privaterra, Cuba), Danny O’Brien (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
The tools to circumvent web filtering and other methods of online censorship exist, but they don’t always reach the people who need them as easily as they could. How can we facilitate better coordination between the developers of these tools and the anti-censorship activists that need them? And how do we facilitate the flow of feedback from the activists back to the developers so the latter can design more appropriate tools?

June 28th 2008
11:30 - 13:00 Session 2: “The Wired Electorate in Emerging Democracies”
MODERATOR: Solana Larsen.
SPEAKERS: Daudi Were (Kenya), Onnik Krikorian (Armenia), Hamid Tehrani (Iran), Luis Carlos Díaz (Venezuela)
The rise of blogging, social networking and micro-blogging services like Facebook and Twitter, video- and photo-sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, and the spread of mobile technology have given ordinary citizens the means, at least potentially, to participate more fully in the democratic process. This session looks at the impact these tools have had on recent elections in Kenya, Venezuela, Armenia and Iran and poses the question: is citizen media having an actual impact on democracies in transition?

Please text incident reports to 6007, kindly include the location where you are texting from. The information will appear on Ushahidi.com. Kindly pass this along to everyone in Kenya, particularly in the rural areas. By and large coverage of the situation in Nairobi is extensive, but we need information from the rest of Kenya as well. Thank you for your support.

It is 6 days to election day in Kenya. Kenyanpundit has been giving a glimpse of the atmosphere in Nairobi; Read more here, here and here.

I spoke with a young web designer by the name of Amanya about his thoughts on the presidential candidates and their commitment to ICT in Kenya. A few minutes into the conversation i decided to record it, and he was gracious enough to let me. In the video, Amanya points out the disconnect between the leaders and the youth. The fact that the youth have embraced technology and internet, yet the leaders are still talking about polytechnics which provide skills training but not the computer literacy needed to compete in the age of globalization and digital pervasiveness.
You might notice that while i was talking to him he had a cellphone, with which he was checking his email

Just to give you some context, if you send an email to the Kenyan government, business or otherwise, you will also need to send a certified business letter by dhl or messenger. Even then it takes a very long time for them to get back to you.

As the leaders of the world continue with negotiations in Bali to chart the successor to the Kyoto protocol, there are some major events this week to make a note of. The first - international demonstrations planned by the Global climate campaign around the world. In Kenya, the contacts are listed as

David Waiganjo dnwaiganjo[at]yahoo.com
(Inter-Varsity Environment Network and African Youth Initiative on Climate)

Charity Weru glady333ke[at]yahoo.com
(Kenya Young Greens)

Grace Akumu cnaf[at]cnaf.or.ke
(Executive Director, Climate Network Africa)

For December 8th there is a plan for a climate parade in Nairobi.

If you will be attending or have more information, please feel free to comment. I would love to see photos and if you are a Kenyan blogger attending the parade please give me a heads up whenever you write about it. Thank you!
From KenyanPoet, The Climate change Orchestra will be playing as part of the WAPI event at the British Council. More details here.

For the Africa online crew there is something for you, you can join the Virtual Rally on the same day Dec 8th by writing about climate change. You do not have to alter the tone of your ‘blog voice’, a quip, a video, a rant, your thoughts… You can also sign a petition here.

At global voices online, we have a special page with links to blogs covering Bali and Climate Change politics, so do check it out. I have been going through the feeds to keep it fresh just for you, so do not miss out on the river of news coming out of Bali. If you are an African blogger writing about the environment, this is the week to do it, Global voices links will show up on the Reuters page. How is that for getting your voice heard!
(please leave me a note if you write something, email is environment [at] globalvoicesonline [dot] org)

Quotables from Prof. Wangari Maathai

* If you don’t raise your voice, then your environmentalism means nothing; it’s mere tokenism or opportunism.

* The environment is very important in the aspects of peace because when we destroy our resources, they become scarce and we fight over that.

* We have a special responsibility to the ecosystem of this planet. In making sure that other species survive we will be ensuring the survival of our own.