We started the YETAM training with the youth on Tuesday morning, after an official launch. The mayor of Okola attended as well as some of the Plan staff from the Country Office in Yaounde. 
The youth presented the map and everyone worked in groups to organize and flesh out the information from the map in 4 categories: community history, community description, community resources, and the situation of child rights and protection. Photo: youth presenting the map.
They wrote their ideas on note cards which were posted on flipcharts and then sorted to come up with final categories. These formed the basis for all the upcoming work. Photos: flipcharts with the different topics for filming and arts work.
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.
My favorite surreal night was sitting in a lounge area near the hotel bar with our laptops and headphones, etc. Outside near the pool was a tourist show of Maasai comedians, leading into Maasai singing/dancing. Amazing music, but not sure how I felt about the location of it -- not quite the same as it might have been in situ. Following that, they put on 80s German techno music. When that was over, we watched Wrestlemania's 25th anniversary in the background until around 2, slapping mosquitoes and yawning while Ali M and Ali K transcribed videos. Ali K asked me if it was real.
The flights home were uneventful but long.... and I'm so jetlagged! I was supposed to go to a capoeira event Friday night and then all day Saturday but forget it! Am hanging out with the kids and getting caught up on housework instead!
The kids are doing such an awesome job with the cameras – taking great shots. And the film quality from the little cameras is so nice – it really picks up the light well and you can even film inside a hut. (Just wish there wasn’t this glitch with having to convert all the Flip films before using with Adobe….)
We’ve been trying to do both filming and editing, splitting into groups to make the most of the equipment and space, transportation, etc., and it’s been flowing really nicely! The power outages have been a small issue but we’ve got great laptop batteries – extra batteries for each laptop, which means we can work without power for up to 6-8 hours on each laptop. So power is not such a problem with editing if we do it in small groups. Yesterday the water went off too, and we got a little nervous that the training center staff would go home for the weekend and leave us without water, but it came back on again around 9. Relief!
We’ll finish up filming and editing at least the rough cuts today. Tomorrow we’ll do the follow up planning with the youth and the evaluation. They will go home and I’ll stay here till Wednesday night with 3 of the older community members/youth to make the final edits and do the transcriptions and translation, as well as ensure all the photos are captioned and everything is organized. Lots to do still, but we are getting near to the end and we’re on track. It’s cool to see how much discussion goes on when they kids are editing about what to put in, what to take out, what makes the story and what angle. Really feel that it’s important that they do the process from beginning to end. We can polish their videos after if necessary, but it’s important that they put them together from their own point of view.
Today we actually made it out to the community. Yay! The kids went around and did several interviews and filmed background shots. They covered the topics of disabilities and traditional beliefs linked to them, dance traditions and their links to marriage and development issues, and started stories on the town cleaners (the group that helps keep the town clean), and economic activities in the community.
We visited the office of the Community Based Organization (CBO) where the Chairman (who's participating in the workshop) is heading up the work of some 64 organized groups, including women's groups, youth groups, and others. I hadn't realized the extent of the work that he's managing. Pretty major thing.
The main thing that we did today was to go back to the map to see what the different issues in the community are, and what kind of stories could be told about the issues. How can we tell stories that touch the heart? That move people to action? That are real and relevant and educational? The personal examples that went behind the stories were super interesting. I hope the youth will capture a lot of these stories in their videos… I also hope that we're able to produce videos that work to stimulate dialogue in the community, and that also are interesting to an external audience. That is one of the big challenges in this project. 
The Adobe-Flip solution doesn’t work, so looks like we will have to open all the files with movie maker, put them on the editing timeline, and then export them, then re-import from moviemaker to adobe for editing. What a pain!
Today we worked out the whole rest of the media training plan and who would facilitate what parts. Everyone is taking on different roles according to their strengths and knowledge, and we’ll facilitate in pairs or teams. We spent the afternoon trying out the cameras, testing mics, etc., and then Anthony took us through the editing process in the evening.
Our meeting started on Tuesday. Our challenge for the week was to pull together a regional communications strategy. We had lots of presentations on the different aspects and did all kinds of group work and analyses to come up with a good strategy that works for each individual office and then also builds up into a cohesive regional strategy. We looked both at the PR aspect of communications as well as the program/social communications aspect, at the different child and youth media programs, and also at advocacy and our different campaigns. I did a presentation on social media to stimulate thoughts on how we could use it in Plan both at the office level and in our work with youth and communities. The workshop and the whole week was really educational for me, and also exhausting. I leave tonight around 11.45 and will be home tomorrow around 5 p.m.
I had dinner last night with those who had arrived for the meeting and then crashed. My luggage came around 3 a.m. so I had to go down to the lobby half asleep to get it! But yay!
After we talked with all the project groups, the radio project crew – Kids Waves – did a live radio show. The radio project moves from community to community, training the kids and then the develop a half-hour radio show on different topics. They were covering the issue of Violence in Schools. They had invited the local mayor and the director of the school to ask them about the issue and what they planned to do about it. When will children stop being beaten in schools? The officials assured them that they would not beat children any more. Many of the children laughed at that. I didn’t understand much of what was happening because the radio show is conducted in Bambara, the local language. But the kids and the community really really got a kick out of it, and the kids were great. Self assured and really professional.
In the afternoon I met with Maud from the grants team to talk about potential youth media projects we’re working on in West Africa to see if they may be interested in working on any funding for the region.
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