Demologue.com

● Digital Democracy for the Developing World ● La Démocratie Digitale pour les Pays en Voie de Développement ● La Democracia Digitale para los Países en Desarrollo ● الديمقراطية الرقمية للبلدان النامية ●

DigitalDemocrats is a Google Group of people interested in using the internet and digital tools to support democracy around the world. It is also an effort to create

a global network of democracy movements by connecting tech-savvy activists within these movements to one another. Membership is open to all. Click here to add yourself to the members list or click here to view the group homepage.

Demologue.com has partnered with Moroccan web designer Tarik Essaadi to create www.e-mouaten.com, the first citizen journalism website in the Arab world. (In Arabic, mouaten (مواطن) means "citizen."). Created in the form of a blog, the site posts news articles, op-eds, and photos produced by Moroccan citizen journalists. It also has a space for podcsts. The site seeks to promote active citizenship and also to provide an alternative to the Moroccan mainstream media, which is controlled by the state.

Demologue.com is working with a group of other American ex-pats to introduce Moroccan youth to the possibilties of podcasting. The goal of the project is to create an example podcast that explains podcast creation and a functioning website where people can post their podcasts and find open-source podcast-creation software. All podcasts will be produced in Draija (Moroccan dialectical Arabic) and Berber. To learn more about this project read the DemoBlog post here.

Demologue.com is working with

Democracy in Action to bring their NGO (non-governmental organization) digital tools to a broader audience. DIA is dedicated to making online advocacy tools accessible to all non-profits, regardless of their size or budget. They have developed a large range

of tools including e-newsletter, website, and e-petition templates and a mass e-mail client. Demologue.com is wokring with DIA to bring these tools to Morocco using a collaborative open-source model that exchanges tools for programming expertise. DIA is currently improving its software to make localization easier and will then partner with a Moroccan NGO which will distribute the software for free in exchange for performing the localization into French or Arabic. The partnership phase of the project is expected to begin in the fall of 2006.

Demologue.com is collaborating with a group of digital activists based in Thailand to create an online toolkit for grassroots political activists. The goal is to introduce political activists to new digital tools (blogs, wikis, podcasting, etc.) that can help them achieve their political goals cheaply and effectively. (For an example of how digital tools have been used for political activism check out this post about the Free Alaa campaign.) This project is currently in the development stage. You can participate in that development by contributing to the brainstorming wiki.