How they do what they do? In 2004 Harvard fellows realized that several people in the world were blogging but people in US could not get the content, because of the language barrier, there were no content of some regions of the World, there were several issues not covered by mainstream media in many countries of the world.
At the beginning it was just a summary of what people was talking about. Then it evolve to a system with nine editors of the regions of the World were they compile what people are saying around the World. If some news are not in the blogs then the editor cannot publish it. There are also a section of Global Voices, Lingua, a team of people translating as volunteers many of the contents available on the site. Because of complexity of languages around the world is far better to have a human- distributed translation system.
In addition to Lingua, the translation sections, there are other sections: Global Voices Advocacy, Rising Voices, and Voices without Votes.
Advocacy Project´s is seeking to build an anticensorship network.
Lingua Project´s purpose is to translate the different conversations to many languages, not only English.
Rising Voices´s purpose is to provide tools and resources for those whose voice is not on line.
Voices without votes has several interesting perspectives of non – US blogs and post on the presidential elections.
Global voices is a community owned website, taking decisions by consensus after discussions. The project is as objective as possible, and having an author in each country is like having an Ambassador of the project. The principle is to cover the places of areas of the world where it is most needed.
It is important to notice that when some local crisis arises, bloggers are an important source to report the real situations, for example in Kenya, in Beirut, in Myanmar… there you can see a different perspective of a situation, not the same image and story all the newspapers printed or broadcasted.
An Editor is not only a translator, have to understand the context, the essence of the cultures, the understanding of the message beyond language. That is the comparative difference with all other media, is the voice of the people talking to you on your own language, sharing a part of their lives and their culture.
It is the best place where you can see what is going on in the World, to learn more about the people living in places not covered by the media, to be close to their traditions, thoughts, experiences or daily life.