Promoting peace… with a pen

By Frederick Noronha

It’s the kind of book(let) you wouldn’t even look at twice. but dip closely into this tiny, pocket-sixed 46-page book, and you could well be glad that you’ve read it

‘Engendering Peace Journalism: Keeping Communities Whole’ is a booklet that comes in from the Philippines. It calls itself a guide on gender-sensitive peace and conflict reporting. As one could guess, it is targeted by the media.

It comes from the Philippines-based ISIS International-Manila and from Min-WoW. In its brief, five chapters, it makes a case for gender-sensitive reporting and more.

In brief, it’s goal is to offer a “handy collection of practical advice on how to do more effective reporting, particularly for those who are working on conflict and peace issues”.

Peace-journalism and conflict-sensitive journalism, together with gender-sensitive journalism, are keywords here. The goals are manifold — doing better journalism, keeping “our news stories whole”, becoming better journalists, and trying to nurture better communities.

This is a book that should becoming compulsory reading for just about anyone who wants to give that conscientious edge to his or her journalism. If you wonder why our newspapers contain so much of bad news, you could also question why our media focusses on war and violence rather than peace and gender justice.

Eye-candy… but of a serious kind: Tips on how to display figures Visualizing Information for Advocacy:

How to convert dry stats into interesting images...

Visualizing Information for Advocacy:
An Introduction to Information Design
By John Emerson
Tactical Technology Collective

http://tacticaltech.org

Creative Commons License
DOWNLOAD FROM: http://backspace.com/infodesign.pdf

Reviewed by Frederick Noronha

You’ve got data. Now what do you do with it? Can you tell an effective story with the information you have? Can you “move your audience”?

This is a manual that “offers an introductino to information design”. And it is indended to provide non-government organisations “with a useful and powerful tool for advocacy and research.”

TacticalTech’s Marek Tuszynski, who announced this booklet, said: “Modern life is saturated with ever increasing amounts of information, advertising and media with little time to digest what is being said. Against this background, NGOs and advocates too often find the information they want to communicate, either buried in long reports full of professional jargon and statistics, or overlooked in an endless stream of media releases.”

Information warriors… of another era

On the eve of Christmas in Goa, the former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India,, a tiny three-liner notice in one of those online networks announced the death of Fr Paul G — “veteran social activist and documentation specialist” of the ISI, Bangalore.  He died at the age of 91 in Dindigul.  In the seething 1970s and 1980s, this was a modest man who inspired a generation of young Indian students. And he did so simply by teaching them the art (and importance) of cutting up the previous day’s newspapers and learning amazing lessons from reams of newsprint.

I met Fr Paul G (his forgotten full-name was de a Gueriviere, and he was either French or French-Canadian) just once.  Actually, I didn’t even meet him, but just saw him modestly lurking around in the ISI library at Bangalore.  If you saw his modest demeanour, you would think he was just one of those inconsequential priests spending their barren years between formal retirement and their final trip to the
cemetery.  Far from it.

The ISI, or the Indian Society Institute, located in Benson Town, in India’s wannabee Silicon Valley of Bangalore (Bengaluru).  The Jesuits have been many different things at different points of time – spearheading the Counter Reformation, playing a huge rule in the colonial economy, getting expelled by a the Portuguese ruler Pombal, supporting management education in an India wrecked by class divisions.  But this centre has played the role of building a team of socially-committed leaders, and not just Christians alone.

Only later did I learn of the work and contribution of Fr.  Paul G. To put it in simple terms, documentation is based on the belief that social activism must be properly informed and well directed.

Tools to Analyse Digital stories

How do you analyse Digital stories?

This question has been raised on many occasions by the Research Team studying the challenges faced by

Community based Internet Centers in Sri Lanka.

The Study is facilitated by the Internet Research Centre of The Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

The study is looking at the possibility of using Digital stories made by communities to understand how the communities interact, perceive and utilize the ICTD facilities.

Chatura Halwathra , who joined the study team to develop analytical tools to analyse the stories made by the community was faced with a dilemma.

Most available software’s analyse still images or long videos.

Also the software analyzes the final output and the production process needs to be analyzed separately.

Chatura asked himself a question.

 

Digital stories are produced using story boards and could the same story board used to analyze the digital stories?

Now the team is cutting and pasting screen shots of digital stories and chatura is busy developing a computer based programme to analyze these screen shots.

More on the story Board Analysis approach to follow

 

Story Circle-

This is certainly a refreshing addition to the world of Digital story tellers.

It’s a collection of reflections, experiences, theory and challenges faced by Digital story tellers. It introduces digital story telling as a concept and practice.

The practice of digital story telling in the South as well as the north has been discussed by several pioneers.

Many pioneering projects such as the ‘capture wales project  from the uk, finding a voice project from South Asia, and the million life stories project from Brazil have been described and explained in detail .

The frontiers explored by Digital story tellers have been explained in somewhat detail.

The Authors John hartly and Kelly Mcwilliam have introduced the book as ‘the first collection ever devoted to a comprehensive international study on digital story movement.

“There can be no doubt that this book is important in fostering understanding of DST’s potential and it deserves many readers among students, researchers and practitioners.” (Seminar.net, July 2010)

The publisher- Willy’s web site –     http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405180595,descCd-reviews.html

Content, not mere form, is crucial — Tanya Notley

Tanya Notley <tanya@tacticaltech.org> is at the Skills Building Team at Tactical Technology Collective [http://www.tacticaltech.org]. This is an international NGO that supports human rights advocates use information, communications and digital technologies to maximise the impact of their advocacy work. They provide NGOS and rights advocates with free toolkits based on media production and digital security.

Tanya herself has more than 10 years of experience working with research institutes, international development agencies and community-based organisations in Australia, the UK, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. She has produced training manuals for radio production, digital story-telling and participatory research methods and has delivered many workshops in these areas.

In 2008, Tanya completed her PhD with the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (ici) at Queensland University of Technology. Her PhD thesis examines the different ways young people in Australia are using online networks to participate in society. An interview with ChilliMango’s MJR David.

MJR  DAVID: How  did you get involved in making DST [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_storytelling] in South Asia?

TANYA NOTLEY: In 2004 Daniel Meadows, a UK digital storytelling pioneer, came to Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Australia to train a small team of us to become digital storytelling trainers.

I had just started working at QUT on the ‘Youth Internet Radio Network Project’. As part of that project I then started traveling all over Queensland to deliver digital storytelling workshops to young people.

That experience led me to be involved in two projects in South Asia. In 2005, in Nepal, I trained a group of women working in community media in Nepal. I then trained community media producers from all over South Asia in 2006 at a workshop in India for UNESCO.

Right now I am looking at the way personal stories are being used as a tactic for info-activism in South Asia and elsewhere for Tactical Technology Collective [http://www.tacticaltech.org]. I hope to keep documenting the interesting work that is going on in digital storytelling and supporting it where possible as well.

Water! Water!

“There was water all around but the plantation workers, but they dont have a little clean water to drink.”

PrithiviRaj Pavithran, a community radio broadcaster from Kotmale, explains the story behind his digital story on how the plantation workers are affected by water scarcity and lack of sanitation facility. 

Lets listen to Pavi      

I was producing a programme ‘Open Your Eyes’.  

 As the estate workers were not participating actively myself and colleague Kosala decided to go to them with our tape recorders. 

As we were talking to them, their pressing problems emerged spontaneously. 

Clean drinking water was a luxury foe them.

They had only one toilet there and in the mornings there would be a queue of ten people  waiting to go to the toilet.

While I was recording Kosala took pictures.

Back at the radio station Kosala came up with a suggestion.

What good would that do to the estate workers who are struggleing for a living?

I did not have to remind Kosala that the estate workers did not have computers.  

“Lets handle that later” 

We assembled the still photographs interviews and narration into a digital story.

Digital Story Tellers meet in Bangalore

The Consultation on Digital Story Telling (DST) was organised by IT for Change (www.ITforChange.net) in collaboration with the IKM Emergent Research Programme (http://ikmemergent.wordpress.com/) in Bangalore, India on 5th June 2008. The Consultation was exploratory in nature, aiming to understand the DST space in India. It brought together Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) practitioners from around India along with researchers from India and other regions.

 The Consultation was an exploratory exercise in mapping the landscape of DST, while identifying some fundamental concepts for future research. Discussion also explored how digitally enabled communication processes can contribute to build a bottom-up development discourse for informing development policies and programmes. 

 The Consultation opened with participant introductions and brief descriptions of how DST has been incorporated into grassroots interventions. Participants also shared reasons for their participation, which included learning about DST as a medium, sharing experiences on DST, understanding its place in the development discourse, and exploring possibilities for collaboration amongst DST practitioners. 

The complete report of the DST is available for download from the links below:

DST Consultation Report as Word Document

DST Consultation Report as PDF

 

Who was there in Bangalore?

 

Participant	Organization
Stalin K	Drishti Media Collective, Ahmedabad      Drishti is a leading human rights and development organization that uses media, communications and the arts to strengthen India’s social movements and organizations. Stalin is one of the founders of the Drishti Media Collective. Drishti is a leading human rights and development organisation that uses media, communications and the arts to strengthen India’s social movements and organisations. Stalin is a founder member of the Community Radio Forum of India.  http://www.drishtimedia.org/ stalink123@gmail.com
Sajan Venniyoor	Prasar Bharati, Delhi and community media      Sajan was the Resource Person and Moderator for the ICT for Development Community of Solution Exchange, an UN initiative in India. He writes on broadcast issues, and is a founder-member of the Community Radio Forum, India. He is currently with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.  venniyoor@gmail.com
Deepu	Pedestrian Pictures, Bangalore      Media activist organization, based in Bangalore and working across Karnataka .It works with media to create an understanding of socio- political realities by using different forms of media – as organizing tools Deepu is a film-maker with Pedestrian Pictures, an activist organisation in Bangalore. They produce films and also hold regular screenings. Deepu wanted to explore the potential for collaboration through the Consultation.   pedestrianpictures.wordpress.com pedepics@yahoo.com
Ashish Sen	Voices, Bangalore      VOICES are a development communications NGO based in Bangalore,  concerned with democratisation of the media. Ashsish is the Director of Voices – a development communications NGO based in Bangalore. Voices is concerned with community media for social change, in urban and rural areas. Ashish is one of the founder members of the Community Radio Forum of India. Ashish was interested in pursuing the question – can digital spaces provide an equal opportunity for marginalised groups?  www.voicesindia.org voices@vsnl.com
Geetha Narayanan	Srishti, Bangalore      Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology  provides  art and design education in an environment of creativity and maximizing individual potential srishti.ac.in g_narayanan@srishtiblr.org
Vinod Pavarala	Professor of Communication, University of Hyderabad      Vinod Pavarala is Professor of Communication and Dean, Sarojini Naidu School of Communication, Hyderabad. www.uohyd.ernet.in vpavarala@gmail.com
Shveta Sarada	Sarai, Delhi      Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, (CSDS) a research institute that focus on critically expanding the horizons of the discourse on development, particularly with reference to South Asia. www.sarai.net shveta@sarai.net
Nishant Shah	PhD student, Bangalore      itsnishant@gmail.com
Madhu Bhushan	Vimochana, Bangalore        Madhu is a widely respected womens rights activist. She works with Vimochana, Bangalore. Vimochana is an organization working in the northern area of Karnataka. They work with women and children of scheduled caste community children in the area. Vimochana was started as a response group to violence against women. At the Consultation, Madhu was keen to explore how to use DST and perhaps CR in their work.     vimochana79@gmail.com
Nagina V	Vanangana, Chitrakoot(U.P)      Nagina works with Vanangana, a grassroots development organisation from Uttar Pradesh, India.Vanangana works largely with women and also with  dalits and minorities. Vanangana has been working with the medium of video for years, using it to share the struggles of women from their area.. Vanagana is committed to ensuring the access and exercise of all human rights to grass root women. vanangana@rediffmail.com
Ramesh Kumar Madasu	WASSAN, Secundrabad      Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN) started  as an informal network and works with  women and marginalized sections of the rural India. rkmadas@gmail.com
Anita Gurumurthy	Executive Director of IT for change, that hosted the consultation in partnership with IKM.  Anita Gurumurthy is the founding member and executive director of IT for Change, an NGO located in Bangalore, India. At IT for Change, Anita is currently co-coordinator of a research and advocacy project (Information Society for the South) that looks at imperatives for a South-based information society discourse. She is also co-coordinator of IT for Change’s UNDP and Government of India supported grassroots project, Mahiti Manthana, which uses ICTs to empower women’s collectives.
Ankita Handoo	WSP, Delhi      WSP is associated with IFAD’s strategy in India on improving rural poor people’s access to economic and social resources. Ankita is a knowledge management specialist. She works with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), India. IFAD in India focuses on improving rural poor people’s access to economic and social resources. Ankita was interested in learning how DST can be used in their Knowledge management projects.  www.enrap.org.in Ankita.Handoo@wfp.org
Seema Nair	HIVOS, Bangalore      Hivos is a Dutch non-governmental organisation inspired by humanist values. Seema is the Programme Officer of ICT /Media as well as Gender, Women and Development in HIVOS, India. She has worked in areas of journalism, communication development and action research.  Previously she worked at UNESCO coordinating Community Media and ICT projects in Asia. Seema wanted to see the current benefits of this format, and how it can be effectively used for distribution.   www.hivos.nl seema.n@hivos-india.org
Kailash Baariya	Anandi, Dahod (Gujarat)      Anandi’s endeavours in rural Gujarat have given voice to marginalised women, helping them demolish gender barriers and build more meaningful lives. Kailash is with Anandi. Kailash has been using developmental videos as part of her work with Anandi.   anandi20@hotmail.com
Abdul Rehman Pasha	Independent film maker, Bangalore     Mr. Pasha is an independent film maker who has directed numerous developmental films. He is also a community radio consultant who has has been NGOs set-up community radio programmes. He is a practioner and a trainer.    pasha1950@gmail.com
Chandita Mukherjee	Comet Media, Mumbai      Chandita is a documentary filmmaker working with the Comet Media Foundation. Comet Media works with FOSS, digital media, community representation. Its activities involve creating knowledge artefacts in film and print, distributing knowledge materials, organising workshops and resource festivals.     cometmediafdn@gmail.com
Veena Yamini	Byrraju foundation Veena is a Project Co-ordinator with the Byrraju foundation. The Foundation seeks to build progressive self-reliant rural communities – adopting a holistic approach – by providing services in healthcare, environment, sanitation, primary education, adult literacy and skills development. The Foundation currently works in 200 villages in 6 districts of Andhra Pradesh. yaminiv@byrrajufoundation.org
Radha Ganeshan	QUEST, Bangalore      Quest works with The Education and Employment Alliance (EEA) a initiative spearheaded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Asia and Near East Bureau (USAID/ANE) and the International Youth Foundation (IYF). Radha is a Technical Advisor for Quest Alliance. She has worked on several educational projects using ICT interventions. She has successfully designed and implemented evaluation plans for several educational programmes in the New York state area. She has experience in designing education/training programmes and courses as well as training curriculum using ICT and blended interventions.  radha.ganesan@gmail.com
Smriti Mehra	Srishti, Bangalore  Smriti is a media artist and faculty with the Srishti School of Art and Design. She works with the marginalised in labour and in urban spaces.
GuruMurthy K	ITfC  Gurumurthy is a founding member of ITfC. He is closely associated with the research, advocacy and field projects of the organisation. Guru also works with the Education Management function at the Azim Premji Foundation. Guru has over 15 years experience in management consulting, and information technology.
Roshni Nugehalli	ITfC  Roshni is a research associate with IT for Change. At IT for Change, she is working on research frameworks within the Mahiti Manthana project. She is also involved in a study on telecentre initiatives and their corresponding development models from around the country.
Vinay Sreenivasa	ITfC
Parminder Jeetsingh	ITfC  Parminder worked for nearly a decade in the government, where he initiated innovative e-governance projects. At ITfC, Parminder is the coordinator of a UNDP-funded field project, which aims to bring new ICTs to disadvantaged rural women, and is co-coordinator of ITfC’s research and advocacy project ‘Information Society for the South’. Parminder is a member of the Strategy Council of the UN’s Global Alliance on ICTs and Development, and a Special Advisor to the Chair of the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group of the UN’s Internet Governance Forum.
Danielle Martin	MIT  Danielle is a graduate student in urban planning at MIT, pursuing an internship with Srishti School of Art and Design. She has done DST facilitation in South America, working mostly with youth.
Chinmayi Arakali	ITfC  Chinmayi has been with the Mahiti Manthana project of IT for Change since its start in 2005, working mostly with the video component. In the past three years, she has guided and been part of the video team in Mysore that has produced eleven videos for the rural self-help group women that the project works with.
Aparna Kalley	ITfC  Aparna is a Project Coordinator for the Mahiti Manthana project, IT for Change, working with the radio and video components on the project. As part of her work in Mahiti Manthana, she scripts radio programs, directs and edits films. She has four years of experience in the development sector. Organisations like Samuha and Hengasara Hakkina Sangha in Karnataka, and Timbaktu Collective in Andhra Pradesh have contributed to Aparna’s experience.

Digital Story telling on the hills of Kothmale, Sri Lanka

watching digital stories on the workshop

There were two groups, a bunch of lively boys and girls and seasoned social activist.

They were all gathered at Kotmale Community Radio in the central hills of Sri Lanka to explore digital story telling.

The boys and girls wanted to find out how to make digital stories and the social activist wanted to find out how to use them.

The trainers were the youthful volunteers of Kotmale community radio who had been initially trained by UNESCO and later mastered the technique themselves.

Kotmale's lush green landscape

The Beggin social fund, a village welfare association in a little hamlet of Leeds UK had provided had provided the funds to run a work shop on digital story telling to the Lanka community information initiative and the IKM made use of the opportunity to weave around a discussion on how to use digital story telling as a tool of social communication

The young group came up with three digital stories.

Living with a hole in the heart : A personal experience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duvScIo9RJ4

Jumping over the hurdle: The experience of passing exams http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTToD-u9e5Q

The disadvantages of being a girl – http://www.youtube.com/user/ictlanka

The young ones also decided to form a digital story tellers club. They will be meeting once a week.

The parishioners and activist came up with a plan of action.

A village knowledge bank, a digital story wall for the social sector, a competition for digital story tellers are some of the proposals that came out .

what is on the story board

The Director of the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute came up with a plan for training of trainers to expand the use of video story telling as a means of social expression and adult training.

The two days came to an end with a new understanding on what could be done with this tool ‘Digital Story telling when its trated with sympathy and care with relavence to the context.