Zimbabwe is ranked among the top ten corrupt countries in the world. EXPOSE IT seeks to expose all corrupt activities by public office bearers happening at community level. The project will be using social media to convey corrupt activities by which we hope to create debate within the community and shaming corrupt officials in order to achieve community development. We hope to achieve aims not limited to the shrinkage of expressions space, the absence of transparency, respect for the rule of law and disrespect of human rights by public officials but will include restoration of confidence in co
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Harare
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
EXPOSE IT will happen in two ghetto communities of Mbare and Highfield low income township with limited employment opportunities and income generating capacity. This project was actually proposed by vegetable vendors and commuter taxi touts after they faced many bribe challenges from public officials and the approached us as a community organization fighting for human rights. They face food insecurity and income generation opportunities and they can’t access free training about using a computer and cheap access to internet café and if they can afford it they will need to travel to city Centre to access internet. Our organization has been working in these two communities and we understand the passion they have on issues that affect community development and income generation. They are perce
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
TinasheMushayavanhu Tinashe Mushakavanhu | Sentinel Literary Quarterly
sentinelquarterly.com/about/people/tinashe-mushakavanhu
, masimba biriwasha Masimba Biriwasha profiles | LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Masimba/Biriwasha
and leornard matsa The Leonard Matsa Blog
leonardmatsa.blogspot.com/
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
The project will create news that provides a platform for dialogue about corruption, human rights between diverse members of communities and community leaders and public office bearers.The kind of stories that protectvulnerable groups including girls, women, young people and the disabled.
The vision is to create content that contribute to the social capital of a community, insofar as it develops the skills, builds community spirit and artistic sensibilities of those who participate, whether as contributors or audience-members/readers. This kind of citizen media platform will provide disadvantaged voices to put across their views and to make clear demands that are vested in with their fundamental human rights and freedoms in a non-intimidating environment
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.
We have existing partnership with Tambira internet café specifically created for those doing community work and artist. They assist with technology, arts media marketing through internet and use of social media effectively. We have an existing partnership with Zimbabwe lawyers for human rights (ZLHR) they will come in hand to cover the legal side. Partnership will be created with main stream newspapers for them to pick stories from EXPOSE IT project namely Nehanda radio, SW Radio ,iharare, kubatana . Civic society organization working in the field of human rights and corruption will be key stake holders that will provide specialized skills to the project linkages between such community based actions with provincial and nationwide programs aimed at sustaining protection of human rights in Z
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
Fifty influential people from each community will be selected to make 100 fully trained participates. These will be selected mainly from street vendors, vegetable vendors, commuter touts and community activist. The selection is based on common ideology among them which is to see the end of bribe demanding by public officials as it is disrupting there work. After completing training they will go out and start mobilizing other community members to join them on social network. They already work and it is their desire to see Expose IT work so that they can have more profits in their pockets that is what will sustain them. The project even when funding runs out will be sustained by the vendors and many people associated or who liked it on Facebook will continue using their phones to post and vi
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
0Participants will be trained on how to effectively utilize social media in reporting corruption activities. In addition, participants will be trained on how to establish and manage the Expose IT platforms. Trainees will be given basic coding skills. Participants will be also trained on how to develop content for their Expose IT platform.Masimba the trainer is a Digital Publisher and Web Manager with extensive social media management and training skills. He will bring 12 years of working on the web. Tinashemushayavanhu is an online edition for a newspaper he brings in 5 years of editing stories into the project. Silvanos Mudzvova is a well experienced in issues of community development. The technology is easy to use and accessible to the
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
Community centers in highfield and Mbare will be set up with 50 desktop computers for each workshop our partner Tambira internet café will provide the computers.. Internet connection will be via ADSL coming from a reputable firm which Tambira uses for their day to day operations. The second session will consists on the effective use of mobile phones on social media participates will use their personal phones during this session.
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?
I was born and raised in this community and can easily identify most of the community members. In 2003 we (artist) from the same community teamed up and formed an arts organization that educates about human rights and we established office in the same community so many people in the community have known about our projects and can easily associate with them. Am the most appropriate person because am just a neutral activist who doesn’t belong to any political party of which many of these public officials we are targeting belong to.
Am part and parcel of the community and can easily associate with their problems and in the long term we will continue fighting with them until we are achieve the desire development(human rights, democracy and other entitlements)
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
How will you overcome these obstacles? If relevant, you may also include information about addressing any security concerns that your project may face. (max 800 characters)
The element of the targets (public officials) knowing about the project before implementation is very high and as public officials they may try to intimidate participates before the projects commences. However the community knows about their rights many thanks to previous projects on education about rights. They will be attempts to try and convince Facebook to close the page after the project starts. The country has so many laws that they will try to use to stop the discussion about corruption however we have an already established relationship with Zimbabwe lawyers for human rights who can easily defend the project or
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
The project will be measured by the number of posts it will generate the number of responses or likes. The quality and relevance of the posts will also determine the desire by the community to accept the project. Outside the one hundred participates we will target five thousand community members to like the page Expose IT. This will assist us to measure the project impact and decide to continue to phase two of the project. The number of articles to be carried by different website .blogs will help to measure value for money as many sites will not pick quality or non-factual stories. Any evaluation kit will be used to monitor every posting and determine the trends of reactions among community members. Also if people from outside the community participate that will show relevance of the proje
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
Conduct a baseline survey in the targeted communities to assess the existing capacity and knowledge and gaps on corruption and social media use. June 12014
Engage a capacity building expert on local communities to develop a capacity building tool for participates June 15
Utilizing the capacity building tool, will conduct a 2-2day capacity building workshops for participates. The workshops are aimed to enhance the skills and knowledge of social media and video links in communicating human rights, corruption and good governance issues to their target audience July 1.
Page launch for reporting and sharing to start July 15.
Mobilizing community members to join and participate July 16 upwards
Evaluation kit and monitoring start July 17
Community day out checking if they are aware and what they expect from project September 15
Project review workshop and new ideas with participates October 16
Project report February 20
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
baseline survey us$ 200
capacity building expert us$ 150
workshop material us$ 170
2 workshops breakfast and launch us$ 750 each 325
project review workshop half day us$ 250
monitoring and evaluation and project report us$370
total us$ 1 890
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
Rising voices should provide exposer for the project to have wide audiences across the globe as they have contacts who can do this perfectly. The project should be given ideas/ corrections for achieving the best. Link us with some other funders for the sustainability of project. Reference letter that you support the pilot project
Contact name
silvanos mudzvova
Organization
vhitori entertainment trust
2 comments
among the Zimbabwean applications i found this one appealing in that its happening in two popular communities and corruption is very rampant in zim. however my concern is why limit such an initiative to two communities only? police officers are demanding bribes from poor people around the whole country let it be a national project.
this sounds interesting can we have details of your organisation so that we can create programmes together in southern africa we are in zambia and it seems our challenges are very similar