Dear Global Voices Community,

One of the things I heard a lot at the Summit last month in Kathmandu was the need for more communication and transparency within the organization. This monthly internal newsletter is a small first step toward improving those areas. Let us know if there’s something you’d like to see in, or contribute to, this newsletter!

Once we have completed the financials for 2024, we will do a “State of GV” presentation to inform the community about our current budget, funding, and prospects. In the meantime, here are some updates on what’s going on:

• If you weren’t able to make it to the Summit (and even if you were, since there were multiple simultaneous sessions so nobody attended all of them), you can find the notes from many of our discussions here. You can also see the photos here!
• For the Summit public days you can watch the livestreams of the sessions here and read recaps of many of them here. We are working on getting the rest of the recaps and better quality recordings up soon!
• We had a strong cybersecurity track at the Summit thanks to our colleagues at the Guardian Project. We are working on making that expertise more broadly available to the full community through virtual trainings and Q&As on the site in multiple languages.
• We plan to open up the fundraising and development process and are developing an explainer on the basic topics. If you’re interested in that topic or have fundraising experience and would like to be more directly involved in identifying opportunities and working on proposals, let your section leader know!
• We will be continuing many of the Summit discussions within sections, for example, at monthly meetings. We are also actively thinking about the best way to get more broad input from the community, possibly by adjusting the existing Community Council process, and perhaps introducing periodic “town hall” Zoom calls or virtual mini-retreats, or some combination. Please reach out with concerns in the meantime— I’m happy to listen, and especially as a still relatively new member of the community, it helps me do my job better to know what’s going on.
• Our Board—the group that provides general financial oversight and guidance for the organization (more information here)—met for their quarterly meeting while in Kathmandu. We have three community-elected board members, two representing volunteers and one representing contractors. Our two volunteer representatives, Juke and Subha, will be holding two Town Hall meetings this week: Subhashish on Thursday, January 16, 2025 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM (UTC-5); and Juke on Friday, January 17, 2025 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM (UTC-1). Please join if you are able!
• Our Board Chair, Mary Kay Magistad, who has been an incredible champion for the organization, is reaching the end of her limited term on the Board and will be stepping down in March. She will be replaced by co-chairs Akwe and Subha. This is also the first time that a community representative has taken on the chairing role.
• As most of you know, Georgia is stepping down from her role as managing director in March, after a very impressive tenure. We are in the process of recruiting for a new Managing Director and will start interviewing candidates soon. Di also left the organization at the end of the year, and we will be recruiting for a new person focused on finance.

Section Updates: 

Rising Voices

• The Rising Voices Catalyst Program is expanding into Colombia and Guatemala.
• A new component to this year's Mayan Languages project is the support for a Network of Digital Activists, which includes program alumni whose fellowships officially ended, but who still want to work together and have the link with RV. One of the Network's projects include the organizing of a local “Summit” focusing on the Yucatec Maya language which took place earlier this month in Valladolid, Mexico. This event is entirely organized by the network members with some small funding support from RV via the Kellogg grant.
• Rising Voices is also holding a conference in Mexico City in March.

Lingua

• Lingua: Maminirina (Avylavitra) is stepping down as co-translation manager of the Malagasy site. Miora Stéphanie Radifera is taking up the role as co-translation manager alongside Zo. Miora is a longtime translator (more than 1,300 translations to her name!) who has also been helping to edit translations on the Malagasy site, and Maminirina will still contribute as a translator
• In 2024, Lingua published a collective 4,980 translations across all our sites!
• In case you missed it, on the Lingua Project site we periodically highlight stellar translations, nominated by the translation managers. There will be a new batch up soon, so stay tuned!

Newsroom

• Newsroom is preparing a series of Special Coverages including on AI to nurture future conversations on how GV assesses different uses of it, understands different perspectives and develops guidelines that will no doubt evolve constantly. Another topic in the making is statelessness – an issue we cover but want to highlight.
• The francophone segment of the newsroom is completing a training in French for African journalists interested in covering climate justice, and the first articles from the trainees will be published in late January.
• The newsroom, in collaboration with Lingua and Rising Voices, is preparing a training on writing short-form articles (100 to 500 words), first in English, and then in French and Spanish in February. All GVers are invited and an announcement will be made shortly.

Civic Media Observatory

• For the past year, the Civic Media Observatory conducted research in Brazil, El Salvador, India, Turkey, and Sudan through its Data Narratives project. Our most recent reports examined the complexities of the data governance landscape across the five countries through the lens of the data narratives and counter-narratives that shape conversations in each country.
• Together with the five Country Reports, we also published a report focusing on Artificial Intelligence Narratives. Read the AI Narratives Report:
  • English
  • Українська
  • Español

Remember you can sign up for our public newsletter for story picks every week, and remember we have some great playlists based on your recommendations!

– Malka