This project is a participatory audio and visual documentary about the dying dialect of Kormakitis village in Cyprus. We hope to show the need for a solution to the Cyprus Problem so that people can return to their village, so get to know and speak there dialect. We will show the historical routs of this dialect, the need for teaching it to the youth and all the interested people so it will not die after a few generations. We will find older people to speak about their language, show the different perspectives of the youth, and highlight what has been done until now to keep this dialect alive.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Nicosia – Kormakitis
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
The people we will be working with will be the Maronite Minority Christian Community of Cyprus. Historically the Maronites emigrated from Lebanon to Cyprus, managed to survive living mainly in 4 villages. Following the Turkish invasion in 1974, the Maronites became refugees again leaving the northern part of Cyprus, breaking apart once again their language as it was spoken in village gatherings. The people of Kormakitis are the only people speaking the dialect until now. As a member of the Maronite community I will create a participatory documentary attracting awareness on this dialect. The dialect's origins are from the language of Jesus and is dying slowly slowly. The target population in Cyprus is 10000, and Maronites across the world in particular Lebanon, Argentina and Brazil.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
The personel that will help developing this project will be:
1) Anthony Marcou
2) Andreas Zachariadis
3) Pambos Charalambous
3) George Vasilliou
4) Petros Katsioloudis
5) Antonis Hajirousos Representative of the Maronite community in Cyprus Parliament
6) Organisations and clubs of the Maronite community
7) Personnel speaking the language of kormakitis
8) CCMC Cyprus Community Media Centre
9) Nicosia Municipality
10) Lebanese -personnel to track out the start village of Kormakitis (kour).
11) One Journalist
12) 2-3 Narrators
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
From our research we will create a participatory audiovisual documentary video speaking about the language of kormakitis. We will try to show the roots of the language, how many people speak this language now, as well to show the future of the dialect. The project will be promoted in a conference, a video trailer, a dedicated website, radio presentations and on the day of the event the documentary will be screened in a cinematic theater of the municipality of Nicosia. General promotion will take part in several social media, websites and a lot of Maronite organizations, clubs will get involved in creating and promoting the video.
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.
2 members are from the Maronite Community in Cyprus. We have developed a smaller project for Mr Antonis Hajirousos, the Representative of the Maronite community in the Cyprus Parliament, and we look forward to his support and help in the future. Mr Michael Hajirousos, the President of Xki Fi Sana a group which is working to preserve the dialect of Kormakitis by creating several classes to teach the dialect to young personnel. CCMC will assist us in organizing the trainings with members of the Maronite community, as well as awareness presentations. We will also involve organizations and clubs of Cypriot Maronites in the project which will hopefully strengthen relationship and bonds across the whole community.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
We will organise two workshops (1 informational and one technical video training) with the assistance of CCMC to engage with clubs and organizations of the Maronite community which are interested to collaborate and help the project. In Kormakitis the actual place that the language is spoken until now we will bring together old people and the youth to see their interests, organise a training session and see if the youth can accept the language, and speak to us on camera. Another important point is that we will working with youth and personnel from the community to help us develop the video. We will train members of the community to help the filming group, and involve the social media website of the community to promote the documentary.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
CCMC has the knowledge of organizing training for government and civil society projects. The journalist will work with the Maronite community to write the script. On the 15th August at Kormakitis village, where they speak the language mostly, a lot of people will be gathered in the village to participate in the training and assist in the filming. Some personnel of the group are professionals working at a local TV station and have the experience of teaching the group and people involved in video capturing, sound and video editing with Adobe Premier and Final Cut.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
The CCMC Community Space has a capacity of 60 people with a wifi Internet connection, a projectors and screen. It is in a convenient location where a lot of the Maronite people can gather and participate in activities. Writing material will be provided and 5 laptopswill be provided. At Kormakitis there are 2 rooms, one with computers and another for training proposes. The one for training contains a board and projector and will be used for training and gathering old and young people to complete our analyses. The computer room will be used to train some people on video editing and web designing and social sites skills to promote the project, and those trainees will be responsible for social media outreach.
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?
2 persons are from the Maronite Community, and from the age of 10 I have been involved in several organizations from youth, scouts and also I have also created for the community the Maronites Internet TV. As far as i know there is a luck of interest in this dialect and more probably people might not know it exists so we would like to create awareness and help give it a push to survive and be accepted by Cypriot society in general. I will be interested because I do not know the language and being involved in the project it will help me learn more. If this goal carried out well our team is looking forward for people to see the good work carried out and sponsor me for new project making the Maronites of Cyprus more known and create more documentaries videos.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
The Challenges will be to convince the clubs to put aside their differences and work together towards a common goal. I believe this will happen by placing this project at the centre of their work, by gathering the information and giving them an understanding that this is something that will help all of them and especially give them understanding that language is a matter of history so we need to try our best keep it and in the future convince our youth to learn it, create awareness that this dialect exist and it will be a way for all clubs organization to bee shown out of the barriers of Cyprus. We will also keep the project costs low due to this difficult time as it is not easy to find additional sponsors.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
The definition of our success will be measure in different ways.
1) getting accepted for this grant help
2) by getting clubs organizations to work together
3) at the workshop who ever take part will learn several thinks from ( language skills, collaboration, IT skills, Filming skills etc)
4) developing the project on time
5) been in our cost expenses and not above
6) Create web sites and social media for promoting (gaining good numbers of friend visitors)
7) good feedback from people watching this film (questioner – feedback to help us on next project)
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
1) 10/05/2014 we will meet the group 2) Monday 12/05/14 confirm to a journalist
3) 17/05/2012 press conference 4) 22/05/14 collect any material 5) 24/05/14 the group and the Journalist meet 6) 25/05/14 a research on flying tickets 7) 07/06/14 Journalist results 8) 14/06/14 storyboard and script ready 9) 21-22-28-29/06/14 Filming to the Turkish occupied area in Cyprus 10) 05-06-12-13-19-20-26-27-02-03/08/14 Filming in Nicosia, Larnaca, Limassol, Paphos 11) 15-16-17/08/14 Revisit Kormakitis all the Maronites from Kormakitis will be there for summer holiday 12) 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 / 08 / 2014 Lebanon filming 13) Editing start 30/08/14 finish Max on 20/09/2014 14) 08 – 20/ 09/2014 web site lunch and social media 15) Presentation day 27/09/2014
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
Budget request from Rising Voices MicroGrant
– Journalist $500 for research
– group filming, Editing, Music & equipment $1000
– 2 Narrators for the film $600
– CCMC Organizing Training $400
Additional expenses cover from Sponsors
– Traveling to Lebanon $1215 cover by the Maronite Representative
– Travel Expenses: $640 = searching
– lunch brake expenses for group per person $45
– 2 presentation, catering = $360= community person has bakery will provide
– Rent for Cinema presentation $1300 Sponsor by Mayor of Nicosia *
– Printings of Banners and advertising material $600=searching
– web site of the film + Facebook + Youtube and general social media $600 = Community social media web sites
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
Social awareness on your website regarding the Cyprus Maronites Problem with the Turkish invasion at the island been refugees on our own island and loosing the advantage growing with in our traditions and now been on the edge having a dialect and community on its annihilation. Promoting our video abroad world for publication awareness and further assistance and networking.
Contact name
Anthony Marcou