OFFICIAL BLOGHER '10 LIVEBLOG: The International Activist Blogger Scholarship Recipients Keynote

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Welcome to the liveblog of the BlogHer '10 panel: The International Activist Blogger Scholarship Recipients. Click here for more info.

Our second annual International Activist Blogger scholarship program highlights the work of women who are galvanizing social change and social justice across their communities -- and by the very public and distributed nature of the Internet -- across the world. For some of them, this work is not without risk, yet still they continue. Because raising their voices is not a luxury or a whim or an option. It is a necessity. This year BlogHer presents its International Activist Blogger panel as a keynote, so that every attendee can be inspired, right along with us, by the work of our four impressive recipients. Perhaps their work can serve as a catalyst to activate each of us and our communities around the issues closest to our hearts.

This year's recipients include Esra'a Al Shafei from Bahrain, who is the founder of MidEastYouth.com; Dushiyanthini Pillai from Sri Lanka, who publishes Humanity Ashore; Marie Trigona from Argentina, who publishes Latin American Activism/MujeresLibres; and Freshta Basij-Rasikh from Afghanistan, who contributes to the Afghan Women's Writing Project.

More about the four BlogHer '10 International Activist Bloggers

More about the history of the BlogHer International Activist Scholarship

BELOW IS A TRANSCRIPTION OF THE BLOGHER '10 INTERNATIONAL ACTIVIST SCHOLARSHIP WINNER MORNING KEYNOTE:

ELISA CAMAHORT PAGE: It's been a great couple of days, now, I will bring up our third cofounder, Lisa Stone, and she will introduce this morning's keynote which we are excited about - international activist scholarship group. This is the second group doing it, and we couldn't be more thrilled to welcome them to BlogHer, Lisa?

LISA STONE: Good morning, everybody. You know, when I was watching Stephanie of Little Purple Cow last night about the incredible work that she and Jen Lemen of ShutterSisters/Picture Hope have done with Odette to bring her children to the United States, I was reminded again of how much most of us care enormously about what's happening to women who blog around the globe. We have with us this morning four women who are exceptional leaders. They are international activists. The work they have done with their blogs is jaw dropping, and I mean that technically, as well as creatively. There is one consideration that I would like for you to take this morning.

The two women who are sitting in these two chairs, it's just actually a matter of life and death that their image not appear, their faces not appear on line. So if you could refrain from taking videos or photographs of the two people sitting here, Ezra and Freshta would appreciate it. If you do take a photograph, blotting out faces is extremely important, but I'm not sure that anything could be more powerful than their actual words. So, please help me welcome this year's winners of the international activists scholarship panel to BlogHer.

LISA STONE: Well this is easy, right. How many thousands of miles it's taken to get here. [Please scroll down to the “Attachments” section to download the PDF of the keynote PowerPoint presentation.] I'm going to start by asking Freshta to talk to us a little bit. The Afghan Women's Writing Project, Freshta, could you do us the favor of describing what the goal of this important site is as well as talking a little bit about how this assists Afghan women to Afghan women, how a direct voice in the media, do their families know they participate and how do they get on line?

FRESHTA BASIJ-RASIKH: The project had established in 2009 by a woman novelist and journalist that were AWWP is to empower women to have voice in the world despite a deteriorating security situation. So that's why the women start writing and post it on there. [View Freshta’s articles on the AWWP.]

LISA STONE: So one of the ways in which many women in this community, I think, got to know this site is by the story “I'm for sale, who will buy me” by a woman who goes by the by line anonymous. That story and the follow up devastating aftermath to it was well read in the American media. You have different take on your experience, and you have spent a great