Video: Checking out the BOBs Video Channel Nominees · Global Voices
Juliana Rincón Parra

The Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards, known as  The BOBs are one of the most important awards for content producers online. One of their 17 categories is the award for Best Video Channel and today we'll get to know a bit more about the 11 nominees you can vote for.
Yaqoob in Japan is the videoblog of Jacoub Al-Slaise, a Bahraini living in Nagoya, Japan. In his video posts he tells a bit about his cross-cultural experiences: sightseeing and feeding deer in Nara, walking around the city,  flower arranging, sumo and even a guide to having babies in Japan.  This next video [ar] has Yacoob showing us around his apartment:
From Bangladesh comes Unnayan TV, an online TV channel featuring many documentaries on the topics of development, cultural issues, education and human rights. For example, this short piece speaks about rickshaws, explaining their cultural importance and how new legislation is affecting rickshaw pullers’ who now have an even harder time making a decent living. Or this next video, showing how although there are laws and embargoes to products made using child labor, this is still pervasive in Bangladesh:
Stands with a Fist is a nominee from Iran, selected due to the channel's importance during the Green Revolution in Iran. The most watched video of his site is  We are all Majid Tavakoli. After the police detained student leader Maji Tavakoli,  the media showed pictures of him dressed in female garb, the police said he had put on the hijab to be able to escape arrest. Iranian citizens believed that he had been dressed that way to ridicule and discredit him so to show their support they took pictures and made videos of themselves wearing head scarves as well:
Shawn Ahmed of The Uncultured Project has been featured several times here in Global Voices as well: his humanitarian work in Bangladesh has inspired many. Whether it is doing disaster relief with funds raised through online activism, working to get people clean water or helping build schools, his heart is in the right place and his videos help bring the message home. In this next video, he tackles the important subject of “eve teasing” and how this sexual harassment is, in a girl's own words a terrible psychological torture that makes them weak:
Grani.tv [ru] is from Russia, and according to the description on the BOBs’ website it is the place where people get together to see and discuss investigative reports, interviews, human rights issues, opinions from opposition politicians and more. In this video, naturalists try to stop the cutting down of some trees in Moscow:
Isla Presidencial (Presidential Island) is a web series by Venezuelan animators of false news outlet elChiguirebipolar.net, who decided to see what would happen if presidents from different Latin American nations ended up in a deserted island after a presidential summit. The Presidential Island is quite successful not only in Venezuela, but also the rest of Latin America. In the latest episode [es], after fixing a radio they overhear that poverty, debt and other issues in their countries have been eliminated after their disappearance the information gets interrupted by a mayday call from a plane which crashes on the island. They decide to check out the wreckage and later meet with other heads of state who appeared on the island as a time vortex forced them to cross themselves in the past and future… and then we see a mysterious character who may just be the mastermind behind this all.
Lao Hu Miao (Tiger Temple) videoblogs from behind the Firewall of China about life, culture and human rights in China. Citizen journalism, interviews and road trip videos showing the sights around Beijing fill the channel. Like this next video showing the Dongyang Hill Temple:
After the Haiti earthquake lots of media focused on the region, but as the time passed, foreign interest began to wane and advances in the reconstruction of Haiti stopped making the international news. That's where Goudou-Goudou [fr] comes in: with a team of journalists and media specialists they've managed to keep people informed about what is going on in Haiti, and what the situation is like more than 1 year after the Earthquake. For example, this video on Plas Timoun an initiative that is using art to help support the psychological health of kids still living in the tent villages.
L’art, une réponse au cauchemar des enfants… por AsianProjekt
Engage Media focuses on the Asian Pacific region, and curates video content submitted by people in the region who try to bring attention to their issues, concerns and causes. Like this documentary done by an artistic group which is painting murals around Yogyakarta in Indonesia, for example:
Project Germany follows two filmmakers as they travel around Germany and interview people they meet along the way until they reach the 50 interview mark. So far there are 9 interviews on the site, and this is the latest one:
Rodrigo Leitão from Brazil has previous experience as a cultural reporter, and he uses it to his advantage in his YouTube channel where he showcases the lives of Brazilians. In this video [pt] he visits Sebastião Martins Vieira, a pen salesman who has been in business 53 years and who obviously is passionate about what he does as he shares his fountain pen collection and his thoughts:
These are all 11 nominees for the Best of Blogs Video Channel Award: did you like one in particular? Let them know your appreciation by voting for them and getting them closer to winning the audience award. Voting closes on April 11th, and you can cast one vote each 24 hours.