Village life in Goa has traditionally centered around the "tinto" - the village market/square. Besides being a marketplace, the tinto has been the place for villagers to come together to share news and gossip.

While mini-department stores, with their convenience may take the place of the tinto today, the core feature of the traditional village tinto - a meeting place to share news, express ideas and mobilise villagers is still a clear need.

VillageTinto.in aims to bring this core need of a place to meet, share news and ideas, into this century. And what better way than to use the power of New Media technologies - the true leveller of the playing field.

What is Village Tinto?

The Village Tinto is a Goa-based community media platform that:

1. Aggregates content from various sources including media and independent bloggers and give it context. The community can also directly contribute news and photos to the platform;
2. Hosts featured writers - people of repute and with a focus on voices that may not normally get representation and to amplify the voice of existing bloggers. Suggestions for names to include are welcome;
3. Features exclusive articles, images and video content, with a focus on under-represented issues and people in the community

All this with the goal to engage the community in conversations, share news of value to the community, publish creative work and foster connections within in the community.

We are looking to add contributors and volunteer editors to the Tinto from all genres and thoughts - left, right and center. See our Contributors section for details.

Why the Tinto?

There is a lot of content put out by independent bloggers in/from Goa, besides different/differing reports from mainstream media. Our team of volunteer editors scour the net aggregating and curating content related to Goa or produced by Goans worldwide, putting it all in context.

This platform is available for the free use of all - regardless of ideological, political, religious or any other affiliations. VillageTinto.in is a melting pot of views of diverse hues.

A Repository with Mashups

The Tinto is a repository of news and opinions on Goa. We will be creating mashups of articles on various subjects for purpose of referencing, archiving and better understanding of today's news. Some such mashups are: Healthcare in Goa, Mining in Goa, the Swine Flu Surge.

Networking with the Community

The Tinto is also a social network, where members can browse and connect with others in the community, send private messages and share ideas in a secure setup that values everyone's privacy.

Who owns Village Tinto?

Like a traditional tinto that is owned by the village as a community, the Village Tinto too is a community platform. It was originally conceived and designed by two individuals - Gasper D'Souza, a goa-based photojournalist and New Media proponent and Glenn Costa, a journalist based in Goa. 

However, the platform runs on the passion of people who have a deep love for alternative sources of news and information, committed to a bottom-up approach to the disemination of that news instead of the top-down method of traditional media and belongs to the community.

Village Tinto - where individuals from diverse sections of society come together on an equal footing.