Making new connections.

• Author: Hardman, Chris
• Position: !Ojo! - Voces Bolivianas

ON A SATURDAY morning in El Alto, Bolivia, a group of men and women at the Interact cafe Scorpio stare intently at computer screens. Some of these users have never had Internet access before, but now they are learning about blogging, digital photography, and video techniques--all the tools they need to have a voice in the global dialogue that is the Internet.

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This three-hour workshop is part of Voces Bolivianas (Bolivian Voices), an innovative program that gives Bolivians from all walks of life a chance to tell their story online. Typically Internet content about Bolivia is created by the middle and upper classes. But Voces Bolivianas enables people from underrepresented populations--the poor, women, and indigenous groups--to publish their stories. The result is a mosaic of video, writing, and audio as diverse as the country itself. "I think the Internet can be the great equalizer, as it connects people that may not normally interact offline," says the program's director, Eduardo Avila.

Along with Mario Duran and Hugo Miranda, two other well-known Bolivian bloggers, Avila started Votes Bolivianas in September of last year. Start-up funds came from Rising Voices, an outreach of the nonprofit organization Global Voices. The initial workshop trained 23 new bloggers and created demand for even more workshops.

For the first time, people like Marisol Medina, a student at the Public University of El Alto, had a platform to communicate online, whether she was writing about her quest to learn the indigenous language of Aymara or the unfairness of boys throwing balloons at girls during carnival. In her blog called Realities, Loyola Larico writes about the importance of her heritage. "From the cultural point of view, we should not forget our traditions and customs," she writes. "My grandfather always said that if you know where you come from, you will know where to go."

Other Votes Bolivianas students-including...