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I came to this workshop so that I could learn and share with the other women
So it's a short, personal story, you use your own voice to tell it and your own photos and you put it together ...
The idea was to take them through the process of drafting, revising, recording and producing their own stories in four days
One of the complaints that comes up from the women's groups repeatedly is that
they don't have any way of telling their own stories. They are tired of the media reports that they will hear
about from the United States and you know, they wanted the ability to tell their own stories in their
own words and work for *** accountability and prevention on their own terms and to that end
we went down to run a workshop in partnership with KOFAVIV that gave women the tools and the skills
they needed to create what are called digital stories. A digital story is just a short video that takes a person's narrative
their written story about it could be personal, it could be something like an issue they are trying to draw attention to
and you record your own voice, use your own images to make a short compelling video
and at the end of the workshop, each of the women had their own video about their own experience
and they are using those now as tools for advocacy in their own community
You imagine you are doing a kind of train the trainer workshop - you have to teach them both how to get to the product
which is a matter of writing skills and story skills and technology skills, but you also have to
teach them about how to manage a group like that
I think that once someone gives you that permission and gives you a tool like pen and paper and a camera or a microphone
you know, it's ok to tell your story. Here's the time to do it - sit down and do it. I think when that door was open
given the chance, they will immediately raise their hand and tell their story
You know in some ways it feels like it can be such a monument - images are so powerful, you have this
shapeless morass of feelings and then you create this story to define your relationship to a moment in your life
To working with women who weren't necessarily that advanced with the technology, but making sure that
the technology wasn't going to be a barrier to them telling their stories
and that's what I think is the common element for digital storytelling in general - to make sure that technology
is only a tool and is going to be helpful in the process without it preventing people from being able to connect
to their audience, their eventual audience - by telling their story personally.
You know there is so much you can get out of a digital storytelling workshop
you can get a product - that's one thing. You can have an emotional net positive from it, you can team-build,
you can learn software. I remember on the first day when we just asked around the group,
a couple of them said, 'I love to write - it's one of my favorite things' and when I heard that, I thought,
oh great this is good. There's the interpersonal part of it, but there is also the logistical part of it
something about sweating with them in a room for seven hours a day
eat lunch, you are there with them all day, but there is downtime when you are chatting with them
and so that's definitely part of the process that's important
By sharing their personal stories they were ultimately going to have some resolution, some therapeutic moment
that came out of it - which is common.
After many days of working on the projects and going through the full-scope of emotions with all the participants
on the last day when the women were sharing their projects
and they were projecting them on the wall and there was excitement and there were critiques
but at the same time, outside out on the courtyard the security team was training and going through
a training session. And the windows were open, it was 110 degrees in the room
but they were outside training, the women were inside sharing their stories
and it was this very vibrant experience. You could see the great work that was being done at KOFAVIV.