Raising Our Voices is an ongoing media training project that works with community leaders to produce content on issues related to immigration, poverty, violence, gender, labor and social justice. The program is facilitated by Media Alliance, in partnership with many community organizations including East Side Arts Alliance, First Voice Media Action, Mujeres Unidas Y Activas, Centro Legale de la Raza, East Bay Asian Youth Center, the San Antonio Neighborhood Network and in 2010, Bindlestiff Studios, United Playaz and the Filipino Education Center.

Broadband In Yo' Face- (audio clip)

In Memory of My Son

A Socially Responsible DTV Transition

Pilipino Montage

Mujeres Unidas

East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC)

Moving From Mongolia

The award-winning program has 3 main objectives: The first is the creation of a body of stories created and told by community members. The second is an increase in the communications capacity of the neighborhoods organizations, both in skills and in available infrastructure. The third goal is to build support for communication rights advocacy, especially in underrepresented constituencies.

Project participants focus on three specific levels of activity. The first is a training program where participants receive media training, which not only makes them more valuable to their current or future employers, but also enables them to better serve their communities through the local organizations they work with. The second activity is hub-creation, the process of gathering community content together for greater impact. This process has begun with the creation of a multimedia lab at East Side Arts Alliance which is open to the community and will continue with a neighborhood portal and a community mesh network. The third activity is to build a movement to influence media and communications policy at the national level.

Raising Our Voices has a long history of empowering people from underrepresented communities by helping them to tell their stories and giving them the tools they need to make their voices heard. Throughout the late 1990's and early 2000's, ROV helped homeless and formerly homeless people within the Bay Area create artistic and political material telling their stories in their own words. Many of the participants were deeply inspired by this work and went on to become local advocates and activists. For the 2009-2010 cycle, Raising Our Voices will be active in the San Antonio neighborhood of Oakland and the Filipino community in SOMA in San Francisco.

The results of the current cycle have been fantastic. In short films they created as final projects, participants have shared their thoughts and feelings about a number of different issues: including a mother discussing the murder of her son, the work and experiences of Latina women, and the challenges poorer communities face in crossing technological divides. As Raising Our Voices continues to develop, we look forward to the continuing growth of 510pen, a community mesh wireless network that hopes to serve the East Bay region. 510pen is a collection of people sharing resources to improve electronic communications and enhance Internet access. 510pen will be open-sourced and centrally managed and make available mesh-enabled wi-fi routers for only $49. 510pen is a partnership between the Cernio Technology Cooperative, Media Alliance and a growing number of community participants and supporters and hopes to eventually incorporate as a non-profit member-benefit cooperative.