Yesterday was the first official meeting to launch youth podcasting in Morocco. The goal is to introduce young Moroccans to a new form of self-expression and to give them a site on which to post their podcasts. Although the project was orginally launched by a group of Americans living in Morocco, the goal is to turn the project over to Moroccan control as soon as possible.

The meeting consisted mostly of a discussion of how young people use the internet in Morocco. Although most of the attendees didn't have computers in their homes, which is normal in a developing country, when asked if they used cyber cafes on a weekly basis, almost every hand shot up. This provides anecdotal evidence for the hypothesis that youth access to the internet in developing countries is higher than low computer-ownership figures would indicate. It was also decided that the first podcast will be about how to make a podcast, which seems like a good idea.

In addition to the content, there were several elements of how the meeting was carried out that I was very proud of. First of all, the meeting was in Darija (Moroccan dialectal Arabic) not the English or French that dominate most meetings between Moroccans and foreigners. This inconvenienced the Americans in favor of the comfort of Moroccan participants as if to say to the Moroccans, "this isn't our project it's yours and the podcasts will be created on your terms and in your language." In addition, the Americans partnered with a local NGO, Amal Sale, to recruit participants, stressing the importance of partnership between Moroccan and American activists. We have another meeting scheduled for next week. More news then.

categories: morocco_, the "developing world"_, cool tools_, citizen journalism_

technorati tags: podcasting, podcast, morocco, citizenmedia