The project empowers child brides to use digital media platforms to change attitudes that perpetuate the practice of child marriage and educates and mobilises parents and community members to end child marriage. It avails ICTs and makes them accessible to child brides; raises the silenced and forgotten voices of child brides and vulnerable girls; promotes and facilitates child brides’ voices, views, and opinions in the public domain and accurately document child brides’ rights abuse while building a body of knowledge for advocacy purposes to influence policy and legislative change.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Bulawayo
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
The project will directly benefit child brides in Matabeleland Region, Zimbabwe. These child brides live in a patriarchal society where women’s sexuality is controlled from birth to death. Their religion and culture normalise child marriages and this makes them disempowered, voiceless and vulnerable to abuse. They have limited knowledge of social media and the internet. They are not involved in key community discussions. In designing this project, our project team has been in consultation with child brides and young girls within the project location. Some of them are school drop outs and were forced to marry by their families because they had fallen pregnant. The girls and child brides expressed the need for us to work with them to address some of the challenges they face as child brides.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
1. Gertrude Pswarayi (Director)
http://worldpulse.com/user/1537
http://wwwcreativecommunication.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/public/Gertrude-Pswarayi
2. Frank Jabson (Programme Manager)
https://www.facebook.com/public/Frank-Jabson
wwwcreativecommunication.blogspot.com/2013_04_01_archive.html
3. Chelesile Ndlovu (Communications Officer):
https://www.facebook.com/chelesile.ndlovu.98
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
This project seeks to document personal experiences of child brides. Participants will produce digital stories. These are stories produced, stored and disseminated using digital media. Digital story telling is a recording and documentation method which foregrounds the voice and experiences of the storyteller as primary in the process of storytelling. The focus is on the storyteller’s control over the medium, choice of words, pictures and music so that the process is as powerful for the story teller as the end product is to the viewer. The approach to this project is one of empowerment, of child brides’ control over their voices and stories and respectful of process and product. The digital stories will be packaged on DVDs, screened during community meetings and uploaded on social media.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
Phase 2 of our community mobilisation strategy emphasises the need to build relationships and alliances. We have identified churches, non-governmental organisations, schools and the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development as strategic partners. Local churches will enable us to reach out to child brides and work closely with the community from different backgrounds, local primary and secondary schools will enable us to work with girls and the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development will enable us to influence policy.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
The project will train 20 child brides in digital story telling production. Our structured approach to community mobilisation allows us to actively involve the community and this increases ownership and participation for sustainability. It enables us to develop on-going dialogue with the community (even after project completion). The mobilisation strategy binds the community together to share a common goal. This assists in creating an environment in which child brides can empower themselves to address their own and their community’s needs. Our community mobilisation strategy assists in linking child brides with external resources to aid them in their efforts to end child marriages.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
The training will require ten computers, a printer, a projector, a scanner, headphones, two digital cameras, one audio recorder, a software (movie maker), audio editing software, image editing software, video editor (software) on the 10 computers, 2 flash drives, external hard disk (with about 80 GB of space) and internet connection. We will use free and open source software: Audacity for editing audio and sound effects, Gimp for editing images, open office for editing text. Citizen journalism is the mainstay of our activities. All key staff members involved in the training hold university level qualifications in Journalism and Media studies. We have also conducted similar workshops focusing on other community issues such as HIV and Domestic Violence.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
The workshop will be conducted at Montgomery Recreational Centre where our offices are located. The centre has a 500-seater hall where community meetings are conducted. There is a computer lab equipped with ten computers. There is a studio where audio recording is done. There is ADSL internet connection and a telephone line. The centre is located close to the main road and is easily accessible by public transport. There is adequate furniture for the participants.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
We have been working with this community since 2008. Over the years we have managed to identify key issues affecting the community. We have developed a seven step ‘community action cycle’ model in implementing our activities. This model ensures full participation and involvement of community members in our programmes. We plan to continue working with the community’s vulnerable members especially child brides and adolescent girls to ensure that they are equipped with sexual and reproductive health information.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
Zimbabwe is currently facing an acute electricity challenge and this may affect the smooth running of the project since most of the equipment to be used will require electricity. To overcome the challenge we will require a standby generator and fuel to ensure a smooth flow of activities.
There are no security concerns in implementing this project because since 2008 we have had a cordial working relationship with local security departments. As required by law we will be notifying them of all community meetings that we will be conducting.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
We will conduct process monitoring, performance monitoring and outcome monitoring. It will be a participatory process involving all stakeholders who will form the evaluation team. The following steps will be followed: Determine who wants to learn from the evaluation, Form a representative evaluation team with community members and other interested parties, Determine what participants want to learn from the evaluation, Develop an evaluation plan and evaluation materials, Conduct participatory evaluation, Analyse the results with the evaluation team members, Provide feedback to the community, Document and share (with local, regional and global community) lessons learned. Success will be measured when the community begins to talk openly about the negative effects of child marriages.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
When What Who
31/09/2014 Community orientation of the project Project team
10/10/2014 Orientation meeting with participants – Project team
20/10/2014 Digital story telling training – Facilitators
01/11/2014 Finalisation of Digital Stories – Facilitators
27/11/2014 Community review during the 16 Days of Activism – Project Team
04/12/2014 Publishing stories on Social media platforms – Project Team
20/12/2014 Evaluation – Project team
10/12/2014 Report and feedback to partners – Project team
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
1. Community Mobilisation Workshop
a. Venue: 20
b. Stationery: 50
c. Transport 100
d. Refreshments 50
2. Digital Story Telling Workshop (10 Days)
a. Facilitation 500
b. Communication 310
c. Training Materials 150
d. Venue 200
e. Refreshments 400
3. Community Review Workshop
a. Stationery 50
b. Venue 30
c. Refreshments 150
d. Transport 100
4. Monitoring and Evaluation 100
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
The Creative Centre for Communication and Development may require Rising Voices to provides platforms for the completed digital stories to circulate widely so that they have more communities facing the same challenge can benefit.
Contact name
Gertrude Pswarayi
Organization
N/A