The Tiziano Project | blog

The Tiziano Project Wins $200,000 from the Knight Foundation!

By Jon Vidar on June 22, 2011 5:25 AM | No Comments

It has been a big year for The Tiziano Project and far too long since we have posted here.

If you keep up with us via our Facebook or Twitter pages, you already know that The Tiziano Project | 360 Kurdistan took the contest season by storm. We took home the top prize in Activism from SXSW Interactive, a Gracie Award for our coverage of women's issues, two Webby Award honors, and recognitions from the Society for News Design, the Interactive Media Council, and the New Media Institute.



We are nothing less than amazed, a little surprised, and deeply honored. The entire team worked extremely hard -- all as volunteers -- to pull off the 360 Kurdistan and it really means a lot to see how well it was received.

The success of the 360 Kurdistan project has also led to incredible other opportunities for the organization. A few months ago Andrew McGregor spoke on behalf of The Tiziano Project at TEDxUSC. Just a couple weeks ago, I gave a talk on providing local voices at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

At the same time, spurred by the Arab Spring and the fact that everyday people are rising up to topple dictatorships, people are taking notice of the power within individual voices. At The Tiziano Project, our mission is to promote and amplify those voices around the world.

Well, good news. Last week, the Knight Foundation announced that The Tiziano Project is a recipient of a $200,000 Knight News Challenge Grant!



We will be using the funding during the next year to accomplish three main objectives:

1) advance and develop the Tiziano 360 platform to make it scalable and useable by other community journalism projects around the world

2) create a curated interactive map of these global projects to allow for audiences to easily explore conflict, post-conflict, and underrepresented regions

3) develop an engagement layer on top of the platform that will allow for direct two-way communication between global audiences and the local community members of whom we support.

The goal for this project will be two-fold. First, we will work to elevate and promote quality community journalism through an immersive and collaborative platform, and second, we will work to provide local community members the power to change outsiders perceptions of the regions in which they live.

We have some other great opportunities and potential collaborations brewing, so stay tuned, but for now, consider what an amazing time it is in the world we live.

At The Tiziano Project, we just hope to play a small part. While at the UN, a blogger and Internet Freedom Fellow Henda Hendoud from Tunisia said it best:

"The world is in the midst of a revolution, it's not just Egypt and Tunisia. ... There is a whole group of youth who only know this new world and it is a world without borders. And that is the revolution."

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