The project will teach single mothers how to use citizen media to document and share their personal family stories, and create a Facebook and twitter page where they will be shared online. Trainings will focus on using digital photography and social networks to share experiences and challenges faced by single mothers in Uganda. Stories and photos will be collected monthly through focus group discussions and posted on Facebook and twitter
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Mubende, Western Uganda
Describe the specific community with whom you will be working.
Most Single mothers are discriminated, poor and illiterate with no skills and access to services like internet, Facebook, blogs, through which they would share family experiences online. This project will help their voice heard globally and solutions to their problems sought for through comments and twits to their posts. It will inform the world of the challenges single mothers face, and help all women to prepare in advance for this experience.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
The project intends to collect stories on daily lives of single mothers, outlining their life challenges and how they overcome them; children experiences; story pictures taken by single mothers of their homes experiences and stories and slogans or sayings on community perception of single mothers. This content shall be collected and aired on our local radio station, and also posted weekly on Facebook and twitter pages created for the project.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established that will contribute to the success of the project.
We signed a three years partnership with a local radio station to broadcast our sensitization programs to a wider population, so, this partnership will facilitate airing women’s voices. We identified two Mass Communication university students willing to intern on the project and shall manage the positing of women discussions on Facebook and Twitter. We plan to partner with New vision-local Newspaper, to publish women stories on a quarterly basis.
How many participants do you think will be involved in your project?
We shall train 30 single mothers selected from 4 women groups in 10 villages. The groups have been consulted while designing this project and selected participants will be working within their groups, serving communities. They will be supported and guided to facilitate discussions and recordings. We shall share comments made to their posts and offer regular positive feedback to their work as a strategy to motivate them continue participating.
Besides the microgrant funding, what other resources and support are you seeking for your project to ensure its success?
Rising Voices would provide us with training tools and resources and build our capacity to successfully implement the project. We intend to use Rising Voices platform to share our stories to the rest of the world, in addition to the Facebook and twitter posts. This would be an opportunity to communicate the challenges faced by single mothers to the world and solicit for support to implement further projects that would address these challenges.
Contact name
Noah Ssempijja
Organization
Youth Initiative for Community Empowerment