What if independent journalists were funded directly by their readers and viewers? Rachel Anderson, a 26-year-old journalist from North Dakota, is using Kickstarter to find out. Anderson is asking the site to help fund her stay in Libya, where she is releasing weekly videos on the lives and struggles of Libyan rebels, revolutionaries and artists.

It’s a task made possible through social media and the generosity of her Libyan friends. The Kickstarter campaign, “Libyan Youth in Revolution,” aims to raise $30,000 in one month. That money will go to Anderson’s bare necessities like food, shelter and protection as she ventures into more dangerous areas of the country.

A multimedia journalist with a degree from the University of Nebraska, Anderson is documenting the revolution through a series of weekly broadcasts to be shared with her donors.

Anderson was in Cairo during the Egyptian revolution and then shipped to Libya. But once the U.S. withdrew its ground support, Rotary International also withdrew its scholars and, with it, funding for Anderson’s trip. She negotiated the right to stay as a separate, self-funded entity, receiving support from One Day On Earth to go back to Libya for eight weeks to continue her documentary work.

One Day on Earth, a multimedia organization dedicated to sharing stories from across the world, helps post and produce Anderson’s weekly videos. The goal is to turn her eight weeks of footage into a longer-form documentary.

As with all Kickstarter campaigns, different donation levels receive different updates. On top of the video updates, donors can get a newsletter, photos and the chance to ask Anderson and locals questions — an unusual opportunity to get a look into what is happening on the ground during a revolution. Her broadcasts feature a band of Libyan rappers and freedom fighters as well as Ahmed Sanalla, a British Libyan who started shooting video to show the international community what was happening in his home country.

Anderson met Sanalla on her first trip to Libya. “I traveled from the [Egyptian] border with some Libyan-Americans who came back basically because their parents were part of the opposition,” Anderson said. “They came back without telling their family they were coming. I traveled with them to the border and they introduced me to some of their friends and through that I actually met [Sanalla].” The Libyan community is tight and almost like a rumor mill. Once she had an in, Anderson said it became easier to meet revolutionaries in Benghazi.

The Libyan people also welcomed her. “I was nervous the first time coming [to Libya],” she said. “I didn’t have a visa and it was right when [Muammar] Gaddafi said that any journalist caught without a proper visa would be treated as Al Qaeda … but the Libyan people waved me in, clapping, asking if there was anything I needed.”

Anderson has found locals to help with translating and finding sources. “A lot of time people are giving their time and you have to be aware of that and be patient and understand what they’re going through,” she said.

Anderson has also partnered with Small World News, a media company that helps train and provide tools to citizen journalists. Anderson dedicates about 10 hours a week to teaching a class of 15 Libyan men and women how to report on the revolution around them. The group functions as a make-shift newsroom, responsible for finding, filming and editing original stories. The goal is to create a self-sustaining citizen journalist movement that continues reporting after Anderson and other Western journalists leave Libya.

Those stories are what the project is all about, Anderson says: “I grew up in North Dakota and the whole reason I went into journalism in the first place was to bring back stories to people that might not be able to get access to them. No matter where you are in the world, there are people that want to know and that care.”

Image courtesy of Rachel Beth Anderson