We are going to organize Palestinian Women Dance and Drama performance group and show its activities and play through social media. Women in Palestine suffer from a lot of difficulties including not only political problem but also social problem. Dancing and acting help women to reduce their pressure through expressing their emotion and feeling. Themes of their drama and dance will be related to women and we are going to exhibit its performance to women in our community. We expect they will become one of the role models of Palestine women in our community.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Jerusalem
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
Our target group is Palestinian women in our community over 12 years old. They know how to use internet and enjoy it a lot. However, they just get information and entertainment. Since many women in our community are not good at expressing themselves, few women try to generate information. Political, economical and social situation in Palestine is getting worse recently so that it is very difficult especially for women to live in Palestine. Voices from women tend to be neglected in our society and many women are encouraged not to speak out. We believe women in Palestine can do big part in our society and tried a lot to connect them with women in other country and encourage mutual understanding. We hope this project will be a big opportunity for them to build a new network for our women.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
We have our own drama teacher and we are going to use our staffs as coordinator and media coordinator.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
Our content for this project will be a performance of our group such as drama and Palestinian traditional dance. Their drama is going to illustrate difficulties that they have in their life. Additionally, our group member encouraged to express how they feel in their training. We are going to prepare facebook page for this project and everyone can see progress of the project. This will help women who do not participate in this project to get interest and encouraged to get involved.
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 started “House of Hope” Project with Japanese NGO in 2011 donated by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. This is three-year project and we are in 3rd year. This project includes non-formal education and vocational training. We also have a partnership project with Grassroots Jerusalem donated by European Union. Its focus is women's rights. Also we are now working with various schools in non-formal education.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
We expect number of the participants for this project is maximum 20 participants. We are going to offer 20 days workshop. Lessons will include basic skills for drama and participants will be trained in order to complete one play. To perform in front of a lot of audience is good experience for them. Additionally, we are going to record their performance in video. These special experiences will encourage our participants to join this project.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
We are going to various social media services such as facebook and youtube in this program. Many community members use these services frequently. However, they are passive users and do not use them to attract attentions from the world to our community. This project will be one of the best opportunities to teach them how to use social media. Our project member use social media to attract attention from outside with support of VACA media team. VACA has strong relationship with NGOs abroad and this network helps it to reach foreign people. In addition, VACA's facebook site is often visited by local people. Local people can also understand what is happening in this project and learn better way of using social media.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
We have internet which connection speed is 400KB per second. It is 4MB ADSL. Since VACA has vocational training course for computer courses, there are more than 20 computers and its computer lab has a projector. For training of drama, we have large room for theater.
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?
VACA has been working in our community for 5 years and its main domain is non-formal education. It also has been organizing its women group activity for 3 years. Its summer school activity gathered more than 100 students last year and it is now planning its drama contest. VACA also built strong relationship with local schools and it has a lot of experience working with them in non-formal education field.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
Since VACA is working in Palestine, there might be a lot of political risks compared to other country. However, VACA has long history here and is able to continue its activity under difficult circumstances.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
We are going to evaluate our project in both qualitative and quantitative ways.
In qualitative way, our drama trainer will assess their improvement of skills and their mental change. Additionally, we will get questionnaires from them and use them for evaluation. In quantitative way, we use attendance of participants and number of page view of our facebook page and youtube page. Furthermore, we are going to exhibit their theater play in various places and use a number of audience for evaluation.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
In June, a lot of students will finish their school and VACA will start its summer school. Through summer school activity, we gather members of our drama team and start training. In the end of summer school, our team will show its performance to audience two times (one is at VACA and another is special theater) . At the same time, they start posting their opinion in facebook and share their experience with viewer. Recording video of their play will be implemented in the first week of July.
Details of our schedule
1st week of June: Recruiting of participants
2nd week of June: Training (Basic skills) and preparing script
3rd week of June: Training on the script
4th week of June: Training on the script and performance (6/25 & 6/26)
1st week of July: Training on the script and making video
2nd week of July: Editing and preparing subtitles (for showing it to foreigners)
3rd week of July: Posting in youtube
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
Our estimated budget for this project is 2000 USD. Since we have our own drama teacher and we are going to use our employee as coordinator and media coordinator, salary for staffs is part of their salary.
Consumables for drama show (small tools etc.): 300USD
Tripod stand: 100USD
Venue rental fee: 150USD
Transportation: 150USD
Communication: 100USD
Internet access (per month): 200 USD
Coordinator expenses: 200USD
Media Coordinator expenses: 300USD
Drama trainer expenses: 500USD
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
We will highly appreciate if Rising Voices can cooperate us in spreading our activities to the world. We hope this will be our first relationship in this field. Because of language problem, it is not easy to show our activities to people in USA, Europe and so on. Of course, we try to prepare our web site in English but we are struggling in increasing the number of visitor for our site.
Contact name
Manar Wahhab
Organization
Vision Association for Culture and Arts