7iberDotCom
Total cost of project including all sources of funding:
$300,000Expected amount of time to complete project:
Two YearsImagine a space where the virtual and physical communities of Amman, Jordan could join forces; a community center where everyone could meet to discuss politics, art, religion, anything. A place where conversations start online and continue over a cup of coffee; where an argument presented over tea, would be re-articulated in a blog post.
7iber, based in Amman, Jordan has been hosting a conversation on our website, www.7iber.com. We have fostered an active and dynamic community built around the site. For example, we published an article written by a group of young skaters who thought they were being misunderstood. They wrote a piece, produced a short video, and stood back to let the world respond. They were shocked with the response; we were thrilled.
We’ve seen a community develop around the website we created. It has exceeded our wildest expectations, surprised us, made us cry, but mostly importantly gave us the energy to continue.
Now we hope to introduce our two communities to each other. We envision a community center, where poets can share their poems, artists their art work, filmmakers their films and everyday people can share their thoughts and feelings. We hope this space will be a testament to the hope we hold for the future of Jordan.
We hope to liberate the discussion from the digital realms and bring it back to the people and in doing so, demonstrate to a generation of tech-empowered citizens that it is possible to become engaged in a process of change.
2 commentsHow will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?
A Space For More
This project will improve information delivery by offering two simultaneous spaces for citizens to engage public discourse and reinforcing their role in the public sphere.
By providing the digital platform for a conversation, we’ve seen numerous folks add their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. We propose creating the physical environment for new folks to join the existing conversation.
In addition to growing the number of people participating in the conversation, we also hope to use this space as a community center of sorts. Having available a space to train citizen journalists, have speakers, hold poetry readings, and display artistic work will allow 7iber to share information with the local community in ways not possible simply online.
0 commentsHow is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.)
Innovation
Grounding our online platform in a physical location, 7iber Café will be the first online citizen news community to offer a physical space. The two environments will simultaneously interact to create a hybrid community consisting of digital and physical environments.
These two environments will offer space for the two communities to interact. For example, an artist submits photos to the website. We publish the photos and receive positive feedback. We then offer the artist space at 7iber Café to present their work at the café. Similarly, the reverse could happen.
7iber is one of the first online citizen media projects in the Middle East. By uniting the blogosphere and combining citizen media with editorial oversight to create a flexible and responsive platform, we feel our collective voice can be more effective.
0 commentsWhat experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?
Experience
7iber has been engaged in a number of different activities and projects since our inception in May 2007. We have been working for over a year on publishing citizen-written articles and citizen-produced content. As an editorial team, we have limited our involvement to stylistic editing and developing a story with anyone willing to submit their work to our website. We also publish a regular summary of what is being discussed on the Jordanian blogosphere through a regular roundup in cooperation with Global Voices Online.
More recently we organized a training workshop for residents of Amman to expose them to free and widely available tools to publish stories that are important in their community. The full-day training covered four main topics: citizen media, media law and investigative journalism, online tools and production formats, as well as developing story ideas. Over 20 engaged and motivated participants from a wide variety of socio-economic status attended the workshop.
Beginning in 2008, 7iber has engaged in partnership with a Jordanian NGO, Tatawor, to work on one of their projects, Citizen in My City. The project aims at creating a dialogue that allows mutual exchange between the citizens of different areas of our capital, Amman, and the local authorities. 7iber was invited to give workshops to different youth groups in the target areas to teach them about citizen media.
We have also started a project where we engage volunteers to cover stories in less fortunate areas that get little to no coverage by the local, mainstream media. For instance, one article featured a group of young citizens in the impoverished area of Jabal Al-Ashrafiya who took control of cleaning their street when they realized the municipality wasn’t fulfilling its duty. Upon publishing the story, the municipality called to see if there was something they could do to support this initiative, and eventually, they agreed to provide a day of activities for the youngsters in their own neighborhood.
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