Power of Personal Narrative
From SOUL BEAT AFRICA - where communication and media are central to AFRICA's social and economic development
In this issue of THE SOUL BEAT:
- DIGITAL STORIES by migrants, victims of violence, and fistula patients
- Vote in our COMMUNITY RADIO POLL
- MEMORY WORK for families affected by HIV/AIDS
- DRAWING COMPETITION on gender equality
- PERSONAL TESTIMONIES on poverty, survival, young heroes, and gender violence
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Personal narratives are one way that development communicators are helping to give "voice to the voiceless", bringing to light a wide variety of perspectives from individuals who are often not heard in the more mainstream media. This issue of The Soul Beat shares programme experiences, strategic thinking documents, and resources that deal with personal narratives in digital stories, memory work, and personal testimonies to address issues such as HIV/AIDS, gender, and human rights.
If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on the Soul Beat Africa website and in The Soul Beat newsletters, please contact soulbeat@comminit.com
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1. Digital Stories: Migrants' Stories from Southern Africa - Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe
In March 2007, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), together with the Silence Speaks project of the Centre for Digital Storytelling (CDS), developed and produced a series of digital stories with migrant workers from across Southern Africa that highlight the issues and consequences of labour migration. According to the organisers, the goal of the project was to create a safe space to share stories and help participants gain a sense of individual achievement and group solidarity, as well as to create a collection of short-form media pieces appropriate for use as training tools.
Contact Reiko Matsuyama rmatsuyama@iom.int
2. Responding to Violence and HIV/AIDS: Digital Stories from Southern Africa - Facilitation Guide
By Amy Hill, Janey Skinner, Dean Peacock, and Andrew Daub
This facilitation guide accompanies the digital stories produced in workshops initiated by Sonke Gender Justice Network, the International Organization for Migration, and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. This guide is designed to help facilitators use digital stories to explore links between gender, violence, and HIV, and encourage people to take action in support of human rights and social and economic justice.
3. Learn from My Story - Uganda
In August 2007, the ACQUIRE Project of EngenderHealth partnered with the Silence Speaks Project of the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Uganda to coordinate a workshop for Ugandan women who have experienced obstetric fistula. During the workshop, the women shared their stories about their experiences for use as part of ongoing training about fistula treatment and care. At an orientation session held one month prior to the workshop, participants were given disposable cameras, taught how to use them, and asked to take photos of their homes and villages. During a subsequent 4-day workshop, they shared their stories with one another in a group process, recorded narration, and drew pictures to illustrate their lives.
Contact fistulacare@engenderhealth.org OR amylenita@storycenter.org
4. Digital Interactive Video Online (DIVO) - Ghana
This was a peer-led creative digital video dialogue in which young Muslim women from Accra, Ghana and students from Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School for Girls in London, UK created and shared digital films about their experience of gender and sexual health. The process began by exploring issues or areas of concern identified by participants through drama-based workshops. These issues were then distilled into a scenario which was storyboarded and filmed by the group.
Contact info@divoproject.org
5. Digital Storytelling Project - Kenya
Initiated in 2008 by the Undugu Society of Kenya (USK), the Digital Storytelling Project works in Kenya to allow vulnerable young people between the ages of 14 and 22 to speak out about issues affecting their lives and to share their stories. In order to achieve this, the project trained 17 young people, many of whom were living and working on the streets, to write blogs, take photographs, and put this material online. Some of the issues that the students raised included life on the streets, poverty in informal settlements, police harassment, environmental degradation, drug use, and the post-election violence.
Click here to contact the organisation.
6. Digital Stories - South Africa
Sonke Gender Justice and the Center for Digital Storytelling’s (CFDS) Silence Speaks project produced a series of digital stories that share the experiences of men and women who have been affected by violence and HIV/AIDS. The stories were created through a participatory workshop process that allowed participants to share their stories verbally, write them into short scripts, collect photos and video clips, and finally record them. Participants were guided through hands-on computer tutorials that gave them the skills to create the digital stories.
Contact Dean Peacock dean@genderjustice.org.za OR Bafana Khumalo bafana@genderjustice.org.za
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VOTE IN OUR COMMUNITY RADIO POLL:
Communities in Africa interact with their local community radio stations...
*Sufficiently: communities influence programming content in a meaningful way.
*Infrequently: communities don’t generally engage with their local community radio stations.
*Not at all: community radio stations struggle to feature the voices of their specific communities.
*With difficulty: communities try to engage with their community radio stations, but the stations won’t hear them or feature their voices, struggles, and opinions.
To vote and send comments go to the Community Radio Theme Site and see the Top Right side of the page.
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7. Changing Children's Lives: Experiences from Memory Work in Africa
This report, published by Healthlink Worldwide, shares learning from the memory work that Healthlink, along with 6 other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across sub-Saharan Africa, has been involved in. The authors argue that memory work provides an adaptable and sustainable approach to combat the spread of HIV and to deal with its impact on people's lives. The focus of the publication is on learning and analysis in the theory and practice of memory work, as well as on demonstrating memory work's effectiveness as an HIV response. The document also contains key challenges and how to deal with them, as well as recommendations for policy and practice.
8. The Memory Work Trainer's Manual: Supporting Families Affected by HIV and AIDS
According to this publication, memory work is a community-led approach to encourage families to communicate openly about HIV. It is designed to help parents look at how to disclose their HIV status to their children, record important information in "memory books", and plan for the future. This manual has emerged from experience of memory work in Africa. The manual is designed to help trainers through a course to support parents, guardians, and carers affected by HIV and AIDS, by supporting them to: share information, hopes, and fears with their children; strengthen each child’s sense of identity and belonging; and plan for the future care of their children.
9. Memory Work: Which Way Now?
This learning paper, published by Healthlink Worldwide, considers how memory work makes a difference in people's lives, how issues around sustaining and scaling-up the approach are important to its continuation, and why, even with increased access to anti-retroviral treatment, memory work is still important to continue. According to the paper, memory work is critically important in the fight against HIV and AIDS at the community level in several African countries. Hundreds of families are benefitting from the approach, when parents find the ability to disclose their status, seek out care and support, and prepare for their children’s future.
10. Memory Box Programme - South Africa
Implemented by the Sinomlando Centre for Oral History and Memory Work in Africa, the Memory Box Programme provides AIDS patients and their children with support by recording their living memories. These memories are kept in a "memory box" which contains the story of the deceased parents as well as various objects pertaining to their history. The objective of the Memory Box Programme is to enhance resilience in vulnerable children and orphans affected by HIV/AIDS.
Contact Philippe Denis denis@ukzn.ac.za OR sinomlando@ukzn.ac.za
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Drawing Competition on Gender Equality
The European Commission (EC) has launched the Drawing Competition on Gender Equality, calling on children aged 8 - 10 in developing countries to express their vision of gender equality. Two drawings by region will be selected by the jury, and a prize of a total value of €1,000 for each region will be awarded to the winners.
Click here for more information.
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11. Living with Poverty - Kenya, Mozambique, Pakistan, Zambia
Oral testimonies are accounts that draw on a person's direct memories and experiences. They are used for a variety of purposes, including teaching and student research, community and development work, journalism and creative media, and personal use. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) Panos is using the internet as a tool to bring to light testimonies from people living in poverty in Kenya, Mozambique, Pakistan, and Zambia. The goal is to communicate the human indignities that lie at the heart of poverty, and to explore approaches to poverty reduction as part of the effort to meet Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #1, which calls for efforts to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015.
Contact Siobhan Warrington Siobhan.warrington@panos.org.uk
12. Project HEPA: Communicating Indigenous Voices of Southern Madagascar - Madagascar
In 2007 and 2008, Panos London, in collaboration with the Andrew Lees Trust (ALT) and Living Lens, worked with communities from the south of Madagascar to produce a series of films and life stories that show how indigenous people have learned to employ multiple strategies to survive in the face of environmental degradation and a changing climate. The project trained men and women from several communities to record oral testimony interviews from their friends, neighbours, and families. The project's ongoing objective is to ensure that responses to climate change and future development in the region will be informed by indigenous people's experiences, priorities, and reality.
Contact Siobhan Warrington Siobhan.warrington@panos.org.uk
13. The Suitcase Project - South Africa
Initiated by Clacherty & Associates in South Africa, the Suitcase Project is an art therapy project based on narrative therapy which is designed to use art and storytelling to help children heal from past trauma. The participating children were migrants and refugees from Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Zimbabwe. During the project, each child decorated a suitcase, inside and out, to tell their personal story.
Contact Glynis Clacherty glynis@clacherty.co.za
14. Heeding the Voiceless: A Guide to Use Oral Testimonies for Radio Documentaries
By Ibrahima Sane and Johan Deflander
This manual, published by Panos Institute West Africa (PIWA), explains the philosophy of the Oral Testimony (OT) and suggests a step-by-step approach for community radio volunteers, and radio journalists in general, who may want to use this format. According to the publishers, OT focuses on "hidden" voices, contexts, and content. The hidden voices refer to the masses in the country that do not have the opportunity to make their voices heard at government level, or on public platforms. The methodology of OT radio reporting is based on a specific interview method using the oral testimonies of the local population in their original languages.
15. Digital Hero Book Project (DHBP) - Kenya, South Africa
This project involves an inter-classroom exchange of personal and positive stories by youth which focus on their strengths and "hero" qualities. By combining digital storytelling with online group collaboration via the internet, the project is designed to develop literacy, digital media skills, and cross-cultural awareness. The project is a joint collaboration between the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (REPSSI), the Khanya Project of the Western Cape Education Department, Molotech, and the Center for Digital Storytelling.
Contact info@digitalherobook.org
16. Gender and Media Campaigns - The Power of the "I" Story
by Mariette van Dijk
This section of the fourth edition of the Gender and Media Diversity Journal, published by the Gender and Media Diversity Centre, explores various aspects of media activism. One of the articles is on the "I" Stories which are a series of first-hand accounts of gender violence from across Southern Africa produced annually by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism (Nov 25 - Dec 10, yearly). These stories share women’s real experiences with violence which include stories about domestic violence, child abuse, contracting HIV after sexual assault, and being attacked because of sexual orientation.
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