Davos: peeking in and participating through videos · Global Voices
Juliana Rincón Parra

IMG_0092 by aymlis
The World Economic Forum´s annual meeting of political and business leaders is taking place between January 23rd and January 27th in Davos, Switzerland. This year, common people can participate in this forum by giving their ideas to make the world a better place and posting it on the YouTube video sharing site.
This year, people from around the world will  not only be able to view the forum sessions through webcasts, but they can also voice their opinion and be seen and heard by world leaders by uploading videos online. Through videos and through text on their YouTube channel, the World Economic Forum Davos Conversation organizers made their invitation:
The Annual Meeting has begun, and world leaders have been gathering at the YouTube corner in the Congress Centre to view and respond to the videos many of you have submitted.
And its not too late to join The Davos Conversation. You can still submit a video answering The Davos Question:
“What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?”
Some of your videos will be screened at select plenary sessions (January 23-27). World leaders will continue to watch your videos and make responses of their own.
Already, there are over 600 videos tagged with “davos question” uploaded on Youtube, 115 videos of world leaders and Davos participants answering the question,and 183 user added videos on their channel.
Answers are coming in from individuals as well as NGOs, and videos range from just text and a voice-over, to faces in front of a camera, to edited video-clips with subtitles. They all have provided at least an idea to help the world become a better place, and I´ve selected a few of the videos uploaded by users coming from developing countries.
For example, one uploaded by overseasdevelopment1:
Fletcher Tembo, of the Overseas Development Institute, offers his answer to the Davos Question, discussing the importance of supporting the voice of citizens around the world.
Others, like Iranian cyberpejman, speak about improving education, using online tools:
This Bangladeshi girl, Noor Akhter, through brac.net, a Bangladeshi effort to alleviate poverty,  speaks about gender equality and how it is important for girls like her around the world to have the same rights as boys for work, education and opportunities:
And from Argentina, Tomás Alejandro gives his opinion on two steps we can take to make the world a better place: Help Africa more and stop war:
These are only some of the examples, there are many other videos uploaded by hundreds of others with many awesome ideas on the Youtube thedavosquestion channel. These videos are being shown at Davos in a special room where participants in Switzerland can leave their own replies, and bloggers are already reporting video responses from global leaders to their ideas.