An Example of Youth-Led Community Change in Mali

For the past couple years, I’ve been supporting the Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media (YETAM)  project in 6 African countries. One of the best things about being involved in the project is the opportunity to work with some incredible people who are developing the program strategies and implementing YETAM on the ground.  Bedo, the child media program coordinator in Plan Mali, is one of those people I've been lucky enough to work with.  He's kind, gentle, thoughtful and soft spoken yet solid in his opinions and knowledge. His face totally lights up when he's working with the youth. He has clear vision and gets things done, writes excellent reports, and isn't afraid to clarify things if he's not sure he's understood correctly.  It's been a real pleasure working with him. On Friday, Bedo told me about some of the short-term positive results that the Mali team is seeing in the YETAM program there.... continue reading at Wait... What's new website!


Related posts on Wait... What?
Fostering a new political consciousness on violence against children

Feet back on the ground: Mozambique

I got into Maputo (capital of Mozambique) around 3 on Friday and stopped by the Plan Mozambique office to meet the staff on the way to my hotel. The office here is small. Plan's only been working in Mozambique since 2007 and in one province only so far. Maputo is absolutely gorgeous.  It's calm, not at all crowded, and on the coast.  Continue reading...


Related posts:
Inhambane: land of palm trees and cellular networks

Powerful stuff

Mid week the first week of the community youth training, the youth chose what they wanted to do: arts or video/photos, and they split into groups for more focused training. The media group further split into 6 small groups of 4-5 people (one for each set of equipment) to then develop their interviews and ideas for their short films, based on the list of topics that had been created earlier by the youth and community members. The arts group chose topics from the list also to develop out. Photo: Some of the arts group.

The first Saturday (after 4 days of theory and practice) we did a community field visit to get a better sense of what to film and to make appointments with resource people for interviews. The arts groups did rough sketches of the things they wanted to draw. On Sunday the groups started filming and working more closely on their chosen drawings. We filmed for about 3 days in small groups, and by the 2nd day had some groups stay back to learn editing, then switching and going to film in the afternoons while another group stayed back to edit. The arts group worked in watercolor and gauche to finalize their works. By the end of the week we had 15 films and about 12 really nice drawings! Photo: Filming on Birth Registration

The films that we finished included:
· Meeting Places/Community Resources
· Alcohol Abuse
· A quick trip around the rural areas
· Forest resources
· Universal Birth Registration (and issue of not declaring births)
· History of Mva’a
· Installation of the church in Mva’a
· Water
· How mud houses are constructed
· The market
· Raising pigs
· The long walk to school
· Relationships between parents and children
· Agriculture

The drawings were really powerful, touching on themes that went deeper than the films, due to the nature of the two media. Drawing topics included Alcohol Abuse, A family losing their home to high winds/storms, Church, Long walk to school, Education, Hunting, Distance to health centers, People working on Sundays instead of attending church, Water, People not using latrines, Dangers of transport means, Recreation, Well/water sources, and Child abuse/Child labor

We closed out with a community film showing where the Mayor and community members and parents were invited to see the work of the youth. The youth, teachers and community members worked on an action plan to determine how they will follow up via concrete activities in the coming 6 months. Plan Cameroon is hoping to expand the program to additional communities, so it was important that the Mayor’s office attended as maybe they would have funds to support project expansion….

People can make their own media

The Youth Empowerment through Arts and Media project (YETAM) kicked off on Wednesday with a press event, and then a training of trainers until Friday. At the press launch, I had to give an overview of social media and the YETAM project. The focus was on how social media can serve as a tool for community development, social change and augmenting participation, because it is based on some of the same principles and approaches as good community development work: partnership, ownership, collaboration, sharing, openness, communication, voice, power sharing, accountability, transparency, and democratic processes. I was bit afraid to use any examples of human rights/election monitoring or mention how social media is forcing the media business to change and impacting on social ‘revolutions’, not knowing if it could be threatening to the government and media attending, so it seemed better not to bring it up! Photo: YETAM launch announcement hanging in the lobby at Plan Cameroon.


For me the most interesting part of the 3-day workshop was listening to the participants debate about whether arts/media are tools or products. People said that they really learned something from the debate, that it really sparked their thinking about what is art and what is media and what both are for. They concluded (as I had hoped) that arts and media can be tools that help youth (in our case) research and deepen their understanding of themselves and their communities during the creation process. Yet arts and media are also products that are 'consumed' afterwards, catalyzing more debate and dialogue (sometimes via more arts and media) and if successful, eventually lead to some kind of positive social change. And the cycle goes around and around. Photo: Press event for the closing of the training of trainers.

The idea of tool vs product can be a struggle sometimes when we start work on YETAM and the concept of participatory video or social media for social change and working with rural communities. Sometimes people think that we want fancy commercials or television spots or 30 minute professional documentaries or fiction films, or they don’t believe children/youth will have the capacity to make their own videos or edit their own films, or that people from rural communities can learn to use the equipment. It can be hard to explain that we don’t need to write long scripts and set up scenes with lights and big media teams with large expensive cameras, and that if we bring the technology down to simple language and hand over the camera, it’s very doable. We don’t need a week of theory before we allow the kids to touch the cameras or to paint something, that the media and the art are the means for having the discussions and theorizing about the issues as well as the end for continuing on with the discussions. And we don’t need to disrupt the community and or have 'outsiders' doing it for the media or art to matter. Local people can make their own media and it can be even more meaningful that way. Photo: Plan and partner staff working on the agenda for the youth training that starts on Monday.

YETAM Day 9: reaching the end of my time.... :-(

The groups continued working today on their different ‘products’. Chaka’s group will be ready with the community map by Wednesday. I spent a little time going over the maps that other groups had done in the smaller group so that the kids could see more how the computer works and what the virtual visit set up is and how the map will play into it. They are doing something more symbolic with the map that looks really interesting. They will make representations of the 3 kinds of lifestyle found in the district – the most ‘pure’, the medium developed, and the city type life. These will be combined into one map and they’ll also add drawings of the different things they saw out when they were surveying to prepare to draw the map. Originally we had worried about letting the kids join other groups but now it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. Each group has solidified and they all feel proud to be in the group they are in. Photo: the rainstorm flooded my hotel room!


The theater group practiced with a dress rehearsal and we planned to film it but there was a huge rainstorm in the afternoon and we couldn’t go out to film. The video guys continued editing and filming, but we are still having some computer issues and the kids were not able to learn much editing today.

Tomorrow we will go over the ‘list’ of things that we need to accomplish by the end of the training to see where we are and so that next week Julie can ensure that we produce everything. This includes:

1 community map
15 community videos
5 drama videos
30 drawings/paintings
3 sets of 12 photos each by theme
3-5 music recordings/music videos of the kids singing
1 ‘making of’ video
25 ‘making of’ photos
5 testimonials for Nokia (30 seconds each)
1 follow up plan which can then be turned into a project to be funded by the website donations (i.e., the training center?)
Media coverage (local media when we have the parents/community presentation, and national media coverage plan via television, print and film festivals, etc.)
Report
Face photos/names/ages of all participants and partners/facilitators

Tomorrow is my last day here…. Photo with Chrystel, the Rwanda project coordinator.

We set up the sound system in the hotel courtyard and had a big farewell party in the evening. Photo: Bernard and Chaka setting up the music for the evening.

People went around and said good things to each other about how great it was to work together, etc. It was a really nice time. I'm really sad to leave! Photo: Joseph, my faithful friend and translator, and Patrick saying lovely things about me....

YETAM Day 8: visit from the Country Director

We arrived a bit late this morning. We brought over the desktops and set them up in the training center so that they could start editing today. The Country Director (CD) arrived around 10 and visited each one of the groups and talked to each of the partners. He seems quite happy with the project and open to the necessary follow up with the kids and through the partners. I was really happy about that. We relaxed most of the rest of the morning and after lunch I worked on some reporting. The arts group went back out to do some more community surveying. Photo: Mamadou Kante, the Plan Rwanda Country Director.

The main issue today is that the electricity was coming on and off which made it hard to work. The country office will send us a UPS that we'd accidentally left there for each computer for tomorrow morning. Photo: Saide, Jacques, Lauben and Bernard.



The monitoring and evaluation coordinator visited along with the CD and had a chance to talk with the different partners about sustainability of the project and follow up. Some good ideas came out such as how to respond to the kids requests for forming an association and how to offer them other kinds of training or good follow up and more depth on the skills they are learning in this workshop. One idea that is coming up from different sides is that it could be possible to open some kind of training center in the area, managed by partner organizations, to house the equipment and conduct further training in the 3 areas plus areas that the youth identify during follow up planning. Photo: the theater group getting ready show their work to the CD.

It was quite a good day and I feel like the follow up with all the partners will really happen.

At the debrief, people were happy with the results of the day. Amina said that the theater group had stepped it up somehow and all the issues with the play were resolved.