A photo of the Global Voices Summit in Kathmandu, Nepal, in December 2024. Image used with permission.

For more than 20 years, Global Voices has been producing human-centered news and translations that amplify underrepresented communities. From Trinidad to Togo, Azerbaijan to Afghanistan, and the Maldives to Mongolia, our work has spanned continents and shared stories from groups that have often been overlooked by international media. These stories cover a vast array of issues from Indigenous language preservation and climate justice to digital authoritarianism and ongoing conflicts.

Our readership, our story count, and our translations have only been increasing in recent years — as has our impact. But we aren’t just a newsroom. For over 20 years, the Global Voices community has been a place of refuge for writers, activists, academics, and artists.

In mid-July, Global Voices (GV) launched our donation campaign with the ambitious goal of raising USD 250,000 to support our newsroom and translation activities. This is a challenging time for nonprofits, as cuts to international aid and funding have devastated a number of sectors, including media. We're seeing that with our media partners around the world, with our contributors, and of course at Global Voices as we struggle to keep producing the news and translation that has been our hallmark for more than twenty years. 

We’ve seen an outpouring of support throughout this fundraiser, from kind notes and personal essays about what GV means to our community members, to an Everest-sized cycling challenge to raise money on our behalf. GV was founded in 2004 in order to support underrepresented voices that were typically overlooked in online spaces. Since then, we’ve become an international community of activists, translators, academics, journalists, and more. 

To get a sense of why Global Voices matters to us and our worldwide community, see some of the personal essays curated below.