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.

For sure, our media is war and violence oriented. It focuses on the conflict arena. Media makes it seem as if every conflict has two parties, one goal (to win), and that this is a zero sum game. Actually, what we need is to explore conflict formation, see the diverse parties and goals involved, study the many issues, and see whether a win-win result is at all possible.

War/violence-oriented journalism is male-focussed. Resource persons tend to be the military, head of state, governments, and police as sources of information. In fact, an alternate way of looking could explore how women and men of all parties are affected by the conflict.

Further: should conflict-reporting focus on closed spaces, closed times and who-threw-the-first-stone logic?> Why not have open spaces and times, and set the conflict in the context of history and culture?

By giving us a brief table, the book draws a useful contrast between war-violence journalism and what it calls engendered (gender-sensitive) peace-conflict journalism.

One makes wars opaque and secret; the other makes conflict transparent. One indulges in the ‘us-them’ kind of journalism, while the other gives voice to all parties, with empathy and understanding. One brand sees ‘them’ as the problem, while the other sees conflict and war as the problem and instead chooses to focus on creativity.

Take your choice: should journalist be reactive, and waiting for violence to happen before reporting? Or should it be pro-active and vfocussing on the initiatives, including those coming from women? Should it focus on only the visible effects of violence (killings, the wounded, material damage) or on the invisible effects of violence (trauma and glory, damage to the structure and culture, marginalisation of women and children)?

Strangely, these important issues are seldom thought about. The ‘old school’ mold portrays women and children as helpless victims, when they can be active contributors in conflict-transformation and peace building. One brand dehumanizes ‘them’, while the other humanizes all sides involves.

Rather than attempting to expose ‘their’ untruths and help ‘our’ cover-ups, what this booklet suggests is less propaganda and more truth. “Expose untruths on all sides. Uncover all cover-ups,” it advices, useful advice for any kind of reporting.

Interesting, war-violence reporting ends up as elite-oriented. It focuses on ‘our’ suffering, and makes able-bodied elite males as its mouthpiece. It gives names to ‘their’ evildooers, and also focuses on elite peacemakers, who happen to be mostly men. In contrast, it suggests focussing on the suffering all over — on women, the aged and children, and giving a voice to the voiceless. “Focus on people peacemakers, heroes of non-violence, including women,” it suggests.

For one perspective, peace means a victory + ceasefire. But actually peace = non violence + creativity, it points out. Instead of concealing peace initiatives (specially before victory is on hand), it suggests highlighting peace initiatives to “prevent more war”.

The war-violence journalism tends to focus on treaties, instrutions, and controlled societies. Solution-oriented journalism needs to look at structures, culture and the peaceful society.

For, finally, what is the end result we are aiming for? Leaving for another war, and returning if the old fares are triggered off again? No, say the authors, suggesting that the media should work towards resolution, reconstruction, reconciliation (including women’s needs and participation), peacebuilding.

Chapter 2 of this simple book focuses on mapping conflict, using what it calls a “conflict analysis tool”/ s This involves mapping the stakeholders, mapping the needs and fears, and analyzing the map.

It reminds us:

* Conflict and violence are not the same thing. Conflict is not inherently negative, or damaging. It can produce positive outcomes. Violence alway sresults in injury and destruction.

* Structural violence is human suffering that is caused by the exploitative or unjust nature of social, poltical, legal, cultural and economic structures and institutions. Examples include poverty, hunger, homelessness, discrimination due to race, gender, sexual orientation.

* Non-violcne stands for something most people engage in everyday — self-assertion, trying to reach goals without violence, without intending to harm or hurt anybody.

Chapter 3 takes us to gender in conflict analysis, while the next has specific tips for journalists. For instance: Go beyond the demands of the leaders and the elites; include the demands of the people, women and men. Treat the sufferings and fears of all sides as equally newsworthy. See women as actively changing their situation and not just as suffering victims.

There are specific and useful tips to make journalism peace-oriented, truth-oriented, people-oriented, and solution-oriented. It reminds us: “Labels like ‘terrorist’, ‘extremist’, ‘fanatic’, or ‘fundamentalist’ are always given by ‘us’ to ‘them’. No one ever uses them to describe herself or himself.”

Besides: adjectives like ‘vicious’, ‘cruel’, ‘brutal’ and ‘barbaric’ are demonizing and describe one party’s view of what the other party has done. Words like ‘devastated’, ‘defenceless’, or ‘tragedy’ only tells us what has been done. These are disempowering words that limit options for change.

This slim booklet made one think; it is very relevant even for a country like India, where communal conflict, gender bias, class-caste wars are a reality even today and the travails of the extremely marginalised are pushed under the carpet by dismissing it as extreme political radicalism.

One of the most useful pages of this tiny booklet was the one offering tips for journalists — on how to take care of their physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual well-being.

These words made a lot of sense to me: “Make time for self-reflection. Meditate, write a journal or seek counselling. Notice your inner experiences — listen to your thoughts, judgements, beliefs, attitudes and feelings. Undertake activities that are unrelated to work, such as reading relaxing literature and watching movies; do something new or in which you are not expert. Be aware of personal limitations. Learn to ask for support and to say no to extra responsibilities [in building psychological well-being].

Lina Sagaral Reyes of the Mindanaw Women Writers, Inc puts it well when she says of this book’s goal: “It is about caring for how we do our work and caring for the words and images in the stories that we write and broadcast. It is about us journalists taking care of our very selves and caring for the people who are at the marrow of our reportage.”

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.”

Next, we go to the link between information design and advocacy, analysis, consumer education and strategy. To make it practical, there’s a “how to begin” chapter, and another how-to on “planning your information design”.

Keeping in sync with the tone of the book, the short, visually-rich chapters of the book focus on assessing your data, sorting and sketching, assessing your media, designing your graphics, clarifying your graphics and more.

This publication has been sponsored by Soros’ Open Society Institute Information Program. It leads you thought an explanation of what information design is, how you could use it, and specificially where it fits into advocacy.

But this is a practical book. Using images and comparisons, for example, it explains how spectrum lobbying works.

It points to sites like justvision.org, and the time-line on it, as examples of the good presentation of data (of stories of Palestinians and Israelis working together for peace, in this case). See http://justvision.org/en/timeline

There’s more eye-candy (but of a serious kind!) too. A project of Greenpeace, Exxon Secrets charts funding by the Exxon Foundation to institutions and individual ‘climate change skeptics’ working to undermine solutions to global warming and climate change. The interface makes it easy to visualize and navigate the research. See http://exxonsecrets.org

Some fascinating use of facts, figures and images here. As we’re told: “Information design uses pictures, symbols, colours, and words to communicate ideas, illustrate information or express relationships visually.”

There are practical tips:

“There are many ways to tell a story or to present data. How do you know what kind of presentation to use? The main thing to consider is: how will your information design be used? Is it for planning? Or advocacy? Are you trying to tell a specific story? Or are you trying to create a more neutral map to guide a process of discovery?”

In its 25 pages, there are a whole lot of examples … that really make you think.

Of special interest is a section focussing on how Free Software tools can be used in these tasks. OpenOffice does your office-computing work. NeoOffice works for Mac OS. Ajax13 is a web-based office suite at [http://us.ajax13.com]

InkScape is a vector graphics editor “with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand or CorelDraw”.

PDFCreator will create PDF files from “nearly any Windows application that can print”. Scribus can create layouts for newsletters, stationery, posters, training manuals, technical documentation, business cards and more. The GIMP is an “image manipulation programme”. GIMPShop is a version of this tool modified to be more user-friendly for Photoshop users.

You could write for copies from infodesign@tacticaltech.org But why waste forests when it’s just a download away? Click to get this book for free from http://www.tacticaltech.org/infodesign or http://backspace.com/infodesign.pdf

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.

So, before just diving headlong into some movement, a proper study should be made of social realities all around.  ’Doc’ centres included the Reggie Gomes-crafted GRID in Goa (with Matanhy Saldanha and others), and the famed Centre for Education and Documentation near the Regal Cinema in Colaba, a favourite haunt for me for many years. Roland Martins of Mapusa (Goadesk) has also kept his own documentation for many years, so did activist-journalists like Norman Dantas.

They all believed in the power of information. CED even gave journalists or social activists early access to the Internet, way back in 1993, which helped hugely.

A documentation centre looked like a mess of newspaper clippings, filed away (neatly or otherwise) or scattered across the room.  The dissent journalist I.F.  Stone suggests a close reading of the newspapers can make you better informed than the CIA and the (former) KGB.

In the 1960s and 1970s, young people touched by the impact of drought in Maharashtra — like John D’Souza, Aspi Mistry and even Pradeep Guha (now a big name in the national media scene) — formed groups like VISTAS.  Their work in documentation in 1975 was shaped by work in the AICUF (All India Catholic University Federation), under the inspiration of Fr.  Paul de la Gueriviere.  The latter’s main aim was to prepare notes, from various sources, for reading by students to help sharpen their understanding of the situations and of what the other actors were doing (political parties, left parties, and other organisations).

From social work in the 1960s, the Catholic Church (rather, small sections of it) moved into social action.  Not everyone favoured that approach.  In Goa, campaigns influenced by Liberation Theology and Marxism were seen as “too radical” for a Church emerging from a long night of a cosy relationship in the colonial setup.

Those who took up this challenged were accused of converting young activists into non-believers.  While this did happen, the wider reality is that it also built up a generation of mostly committed
social activists, people who thought about more than just a good job, the next good party and dance.  Today, as politics (and even activism) becomes increasingly cynical, one cannot but help wondering: where are the individuals who have the foresight to shape a generation of leaders that we so badly need?  Not just opportunists or real-estate brokers working in the guise of being politicians and “social
workers”. –FN

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

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

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.

Training community media producers to be Digital Storytelling trainers in India

MJR  DAVID: For what purposes have communities  been using DST in South Asia? What have been your specific experiences?

TANYA NOTLEY: I am less interested in a really strict definition of digital storytelling — where it is understood to be a two-minute short film produced by one individual in a week long workshop or whatever — than I am in thinking about the process of personal storytelling using digital technologies.

There is a lot of digital media training going on in South Asia that is driven by community needs and that ultimately supports the amplification of local voices.

Some of these personal stories are made using audio, some use video, some are text based and online. So, I think it’s important not to get hooked on the form and the technology and to instead think about process and outcome for the people participating.

For that reason there are three digital storytelling efforts that I would like to mention from South Asia that I am great fan of. They are all people-centred, participatory and have been sustained over some time with the aim of having longer-term social change impacts. They all illustrate very different kinds of digital storytelling:

• Video Volunteers: I like the work this NGO in India because storytelling and video-making are used as tools within communities to collectively identify an injustice and to then to address it. [http://www.videovolunteers.org/]
• Blank Noise:  This Indian-based blog project was started by one young woman and now it allows people from across Asia to tell their personal stories of sexual harassment.  I like this blog because it uses personal stories in a way that is playful and creative and engaging — even though it is actually focused on the very serious topic of sexual harassment. [http://blog.blanknoise.org/]
• Chatting with My Best Friend (Saathi Sanga Man Ka Kura): is a national radio program in Nepal that is played on community and commercial radio stations throughout the country. It is probably less participatory that the prior examples in some ways but I had the pleasure of observing the team who make this program and engaging with its audience for over a period of a month for a research project I worked on. The team were getting hundreds of letters from young people every week that revealed their personal stories, which were often very heart-breaking. The team read and responded to each and every one of these letters and they artfully weave many of these stories into a weekly radio program that is deeply loved by young people all over Nepal.It’s like documentary making — done in particular ways it can be developed around personal stories in a way that is honest, meaningful, respectful and has impact. [http://www.ssmk.org/]

SSMK (Chatting with my best friend) producer Kripa talks with young students from a blind school in Western Nepal during an SSMK regular field visit

MJR DAVID: Would you like to share a particular DST and the story behind it?

TANYA NOTLEY: The story that really shaped the way I think about digital storytelling training comes from a young woman I trained in Nepal.

During the workshop she decided she wanted to tell a story about what was happening to her: a few weeks earlier her family had told her she was to be married the following day to a boy she had never met. They told her it had all been arranged. She cried and shouted and said she refused. They locked her in the house and screamed at her, hit her and told her if she did not do it they would never speak to her again.

So the wedding went ahead. She told us she was refusing to speak to her new husband, wanted out of the marriage and she was living in complete misery.

Her friends, who were doing the workshop with her, were shocked. They had not known why she had seemed so depressed; it was only the digital storytelling process that had given her the courage to speak out to them.

Talking with a student at digital storytelling workshop in Queensland

But the more she spoke, the more we listened, the angrier she got and the more determined she that she would have justice. She wanted to broadcast her digital story on the local cable TV station, which had agreed to play our stories.

It was a real conundrum for me because while I wanted to stand beside her, the fact was that I was that would be flying back to the safety of my own home in Australia a week later. And we had not really set up the structures for the workshop to make sure people would be supported and would have a process to go through where they could think about the risks involved in telling their story in a way that revealed their identities.

It was a big learning lesson for me.  I have since refused to be part of any storytelling projects that have not thought these things through carefully and sensitively or expressed the will to do so. I think this sort of thinking remains a big challenge for digital storytelling trainers everywhere.

MJR DAVID: Do you think that DST should be circulated free to all or certain restrictions need to be applied?

TANYA NOTLEY: I think what you do with digital stories should be very well thought out and specific to the situation and in the end be dictated by the person who created the story. I don’t think you should make that decision for people but I do think as a trainer you should alway err on the side of caution and make time to talk through risks and options and provide advice based on your knowledge and experience.

You need to develop a process whereby people think about the worst case scenario should their story fall into the wrong hands. And although I am an advocate of Creative Commons [http://www.creativecommons.org] licensing, that does not mean I always think you should use a license your content in a way that allows people to create new things out of what you have made.

It might be best that your content is not re-mixed and taken out of context. It depends.

At a digital storytelling  workshop with Mrs Minna Brenna [http://www.kgurbanvillage.com.au/sharing/digital/minna.shtm]

I am making it sound complicated though — it’s not really!

You just need a good process to talk through people the risks and their choices in terms of how they may want to make their story to safeguard their privacy and what they want to happen to their story once they have created it.

MJR DAVID: Any practical steps to safeguard storey tellers privacy, and prevent inappropriate exposure ?

TANYA NOTLEY: As above. Have a good process. Think about different ways to tell the same story if it’s sensitive (don’t show the storytellers face, don’t use their voice, use illustrations etc).

A digital storytelling workshop with women in Nepal.

Get the storyteller to choose a copyright license that is right for them using simple questions. Some useful guidelines for all these kinds of questions and processes can be found on the Witness website: [http://hub.witness.org/en/action/toolkit]

“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.

 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

Participant

Organization

Stalin K

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

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

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 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 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

Vinod Pavarala is Professor of Communication and Dean, Sarojini Naidu School of Communication, Hyderabad.

www.uohyd.ernet.in

vpavarala@gmail.com

Shveta Sarada

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

itsnishant@gmail.com

Madhu Bhushan

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

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

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

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 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 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’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

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

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

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 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

GuruMurthy K

Roshni Nugehalli

Vinay Sreenivasa

Parminder Jeetsingh

Danielle Martin

Chinmayi Arakali

Aparna Kalley

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.

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.