Winner of The BOBs wants to ‘help save lives and speed recovery'

“The Ushahidi platform is an African technology innovation that is changing a lot of things, not least of which is the way that information flows during human rights events,” said Erik Hersman from Kenya at the awards ceremony for “The BOBs” on Tuesday, June 22 at the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum in Bonn. Hersman is one of the authors of “Ushahidi.com”, which was chosen as the best blog at Deutsche Welle’s international weblog awards The BOBs. The blog was developed by a team made up of Africans and Americans.

The blog collects and shows reports from users who have the Ushahidi application built into their own website. This application makes it possible to visualize information from conflict and disaster regions on an interactive map.

The application was first used in Kenya in 2008 to map out the violence and riots after the elections. Since then, users in many different countries have used Ushahidi to help save lives – like in finding the survivors of the earthquake in Haiti. “One of our goals with Ushahidi has always been to help save lives and speed recovery,” said Hersman.

The “Special Topic Award Climate Change” was given to Bruno Rezende from Brazil for his blog “Coluna Zero”. He says his blog is all about “minimizing excessive consumption”.

The Iranian journalist and women’s rights activist Zhila Bani Jaghob, whose blog “We are Journalists” won the Reporters Without Borders prize at The BOBs, was not able to attend the awards ceremony. Bani Jaghob was recently sentenced to one year of prison and is being restricted from working as a journalist for 30 years. “One of the reasons they named for handing me this harsh sentence were the articles I wrote on my weblog,” said Bani Jaghob in a written statement. Her blog featured stories about people's protests against the disputed presidential election in Iran last year.

The following bloggers were also awarded prizes at the awards ceremony in the World Conference Center Bonn:

• Best Weblog Bengali: Mohammad Ali (Bangladesh) for “ali-madmed.com”
• Best Weblog Chinese: Jiaxian Wu (China) for “Ke Neng Ba”
• Best Weblog English: Jillian C. York for “Talk Morocco”
• Best Weblog French: Angès Maillard (France) for “Le Monolecte”
• Best Weblog German: Stefan Sichermann (Germany) for “Der Postillon”
• Best Weblog Indonesian: Antyo Renjoko (Indonesia) for “Blogombal”
• Best Weblog Portuguese: Dulcidio Braz Jr. (Brazil) for “Fisica na Veia”
• Best Weblog Russian: Elia Kabanov (Russia) for “Metkere”
• Best Weblog Spanish: Asución Delgado Mencía Ricardo Ribalda Menía (Spain) for “Mundoporlibre.com”
• Blogwurst: Vitor Knijnik (Brazil) for “Blogs do Além”

Users from around the world generated more than 8,400 suggestions for this prizes in 11 languages and six categories. During a pre-selection round, the jury nominated 187 candidates. A complete list of all this year’s winners can be found at www.thebobs.com.

Approximately 1,500 people from 95 countries are participating in this the third Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum. Co-host of the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum is the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Sparkasse in Bonn. The convention is also supported by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the Family, Women and Integration Ministry of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, European Funds for Regional Development, the city of Bonn, DHL, the KSB Group and Faber-Castell.