HiperBarrio: Changing Perceptions with Creativity · Global Voices
Rezwan

Rising Voices grantee, the HiperBarrio project, is a great example of how underrepresented communities are increasingly able to tell their stories to the world from distant and remote places. Their success lies in the use of new media tools like blogs, videoblogs, and photoblogs to enable communities to to portray their thoughts and creativity.
Izpapalotl sums up HiperBarrio’s activities up to October. She highlights some of the project achievements to date.
Juliana Rincon reports that the photography workshop on November 10 was different than the previous ones as the participants went out in the open and visited the Carabobo walkway of Medellin to take photographs. Since they have already reached the limit with their HiperBarrio Flickr account their photos were uploaded on a Picasa album.
Galo, a participant, talks about their first encounter with video editing. They used images and videos taken during Cultural Week at the Fe y Alegría School in Santo Domingo. The videos are up on youtube and the images are in Medea´s flickr account.
The picture above is of the pageant participants dressed up with their ball gowns made from recycled materials.
The video shows the pageant participant who secured second place dancing with her partner. She is dancing a tropical medley including Porro, a regional dance popular in Medellin.
A couple of new posts were published in the group blog Convergente.
First the participants vowed to change the perceptions of the La Loma neighborhood in Medellin:
We want to share truths from the Public Library in St. Javier hill with the rest of the world, via the Internet.
The latest post [Es] tells the story of 78-year-old Manuael Salvador, a resident of La Loma who is known as “Suso Mugre”. The blogger talks about his struggles as a garbage scavenger who lives in a dilapidated house. Everybody seems to accept his state without offering to help. The Convergentes participants point out that we sometimes fail to notice our neighbors or people like Suso as become simply another part of the landscape.
HiperBarrio published their first newsletter in October. Their next goal is to arrange a writing workshop and publish a 2 newspaper.