"Strengthening your language on the internet through digital activism"
Capacity 50. International Virtual Workshop Are you a native or heritage speaker or user of an Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Indigenous, minority, or low-resourced language from Oceania? Do you have an idea for a project or campaign that uses the internet or digital media to promote your language in digital spaces? Are you interested in developing a plan to further advance that idea to make an impact for your language community? If you answered “yes” to all these three questions, then we would like to invite you to take part in a workshop “Strengthening your language on the internet through digital activism”. |

Eddie Avila (Bolivia) - Eddie Avila is the Director of Rising Voices, the digital inclusion arm of Global Voices. This global initiative provides training, mentoring, and network-building with underrepresented communities seeking to utilize the internet and digital media to fully participate online and express themselves by telling their own stories. This includes a special focus on engaging with indigenous and minoritized language communities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, leveraging digital technologies to promote their language and culture online.

Shana Elena Inofuentes (Bolivia, but in the US, Quechua language) - Shana Inofuentes (Aymara and Ashkenazi) is an Indigenous art activist who revels in communication that inspires joy and justice. She is a proud daughter of the Bolivian immigrant community of metro Washington, D.C.—the largest Quechua and the largest Bolivian community in the U.S., with approximately 300,000 people. A communications strategist by profession, Shana recently launched Ch’ama: Native Americas, an Indigenous creative consulting and translation firm, which provides the only certified professional translations between Aymara, Quechua, and English in the U.S. Ch’ama will feature a hub of creative material by Native Andean artists tailored for the diaspora, where the film Shana is producing, Kutiy: Our Great Migration, will also be featured. She founded and is President of The Quechua Project, “a novel, 21st century approach to addressing linguistic oppression and Native erasure,”1 using social media activism for Quechua language revitalization among her community’s youth.

Isela Xospa (Mexico, Náhuatl language) - Isela Xospa (Mexico City, 1975) is an independent illustrator, designer, and publisher from Mexico City. Since 2014, she has been the head of Ediciones Xospatronik, an autonomous, independent publishing house for children’s literature that centres themes and characters from Milpa Alta, a Nahua region in the south of Mexico City. Winner of the Antonio García Cubas Award for Best Book and Editorial Work in the field of Anthropology and History in the Children’s Book category. She actively participates in the exchange of experiences in self-publishing books in indigenous languages and visual narratives. Her artistic and research work focuses on experimentation with registration systems typical of native cultures as valid processes of learning and transmission of knowledge. Chevening British Library Fellow 2021-2022 working on Early Printed Books from Latin America. Part of her project was making information about the collection accessible to the speakers of these languages and laying the groundwork for future exchange with the British Library.

Subhashish Panigrahi (India, Odia language) - Subhashish Panigrahi is a public interest language archivist and researcher, civil society leader, and a non-fiction filmmaker interested in tech, society, media, Open Culture, and digital rights. He founded OpenSpeaks to grow open media and educational resources in low- and medium-resouce langjHes and co-founded a nonprofit called O Foundation.