Silent Heroes, Invisible Bridges, is a digital media resource offering video, radio and online stories on social globalization, cross-cultural and cross-religious communication, integration of immigrants and universal values of human rights.
The Istanbul-based organization is dedicated for freelance journalists to enjoy freedom to report in any tool or form of modern media besides getting a modest amount for their contribution. Nonetheless, it also acts as a bridge between organisations working in various parts, languages and mediums across the glove.
Conceived in Alexandria, Egypt, Silent Heroes, Invisible Bridges is one of the recipients of United Nations X-Cultural Reporting Award 2010.
Silent Heroes, Invisible Bridges is working in English, Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, German, Spanish, French languages by providing media sources free-to-use exclusive stories on the subject. Though the portal only has content in English and Arabic, by the August 2012, other languages’ website would also be available.
Member of Anna Lindh Foundation, today this organization also enjoys support of the United Nations’ Alliance of Civilizations and International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), Washington DC, United States.
Our Objectives
• To explore stories of religious and cultural harmony, normally ignored in the rush of hard news
• To add value to healthy debate and discourse about the hurdles in cross-cultural, cross-religion integration, through our exclusive Op-ed articles and Editorials
• To provide media handy online/video stories of religious, cultural and social integration
• To promote digital media and train journalists across developing nations
Our Work [1] >> The Founding Team [2]
Our Work
Normally journalists tired of covering conflicts, corruption and destruction want a quick soft story for with limited budget and time. So they manage to do the most visible ones compared to the most relevant ones and unexplored ones.
Through its exclusive human stories, Silent Heroes, Invisible Bridges offers editors and director news, in both print and electronic media respectively, opportunity to fill the void created due to excessive use of routine information or breaking news interruptions.
Thus, besides generating its own readership, this portal not only allows free-of-cost republishing or sharing of its content under Creative Commons' license [3] but also provides insight into existing yet hidden real life heroes working behind-the-scenes to foster cross-cultural, cross religious and trans-national trust.
The organization gathers human interest stories of silent heroes who are contributing to both; Muslim societies generally condemned or defamed for terrorism, extremism, abuse of women’s rights and corruption, and other religions and cultures, for their isolation and lack of knowledge about the others thus creating stereotypes.
• We welcome editors/director news to write contact details about the silent heroes highlighted through our stories in case, the respective media houses wish to cover them in a different way. Please go to Contact Us [4]
button to submit your request and information would be provided to bona fide news organizations only.
• Those editors/director news interested in using our online/video stories free-of-cost under Creative Common’s license can write to us for better quality photos/videos through the same Contact Us page. We would be obliged to assist.
We are soon launching a multi-lingual Internet Radio channel in cooperation with top radio stations in each language i.e. English, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Spanish, French and German. The radio would later become 100 per cent home-produced interactive multi-lingual radio for religious and cultural communication, which can also generate advertising revenue for the project.
The Founding Team
Naveed Ahmad
Naveed Ahmad is a hybrid of investigative journalist and academic with a background in conflict and peace studies. His journalistic work has been published in English, Urdu, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, German, Turkish and Norwegian languages. With 18-years of field reporting experience to his credit, he contributes to journals of various international universities as well news sources. He has been a media trainer on investigative reporting and TV journalism over the last five years. Ahmad is a co-founder and joint recipient of UN X-Cultural Reporting Award 2010. UN Alliance of Civilizations [5] and International Center for Journalists [6] had chosen Silent Heroes, Invisible Bridges for the unique distinction.
In 2000, Ahmad won the Hawaii-based East-West Center’s [7] Jefferson Fellowship focusing on ‘Challenges of Globalization’. The Washington Press Center offered him his next fellowship in 2004 on ‘Conflict Resolution and Nuclear Non-proliferation’. He is a recipient of Panos Media Fellowship on Conflict. He tweets @naveed360.
Alia Turki Al-Rabeo
Joint recipient of UN X-Cultural Reporting Award 2010 [5], Alia Turki Al-Rabeo is a reporter with experience of working as a producer and an anchor. Besides reporting for regional newspapers as Awan (Kuwait) and Al-Jazira (Saudi Arabia), she has been contributing to the London-based Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) organization and The McClatchy Company, a syndicate of 30 dailies across the United States. She is also 2011-2012 digital journalism fellow at the Intajour Institute [8], Germany.
Owing to her special interest in gender issues, she has been contributing to the World Pulse [9] and The Women’s Interntional Persepctive [10]. Her journalistic work has appeared in news sources based in America, Britain, Pakistan and the Gulf region.
Beyond covering culture and arts bits, Ms Al-Rabeo has special interest in the inter-religious and inter-cultural relations in the Middle East, North Africa and the West. She experienced cross-cultural lifestyles since childhood as her paternal family hails from the Arab region, while her mother is of Turkish heritage.
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