SharedLives is about bringing together underserved youth from different backgrounds, different countries by getting the youth engaged, helping them understand each other and building tolerance between diverse groups through visual communication and storytelling. The pilot project will involve children from underprivileged families in Bangladesh sharing their stories through digital media. Stories from different regions will be exchanged and exhibited internationally, increasing the knowledge of youth on different international social matters occurring around them.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Dhaka
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
The main focus of the Bangladesh chapter will be child domestic workers and other children from low-income families. One Degree Initiative Foundation has worked with some of these children before and we believe in their potential to attain their dreams. Their lack of communication with the rest of the world limits their visions, so through this project, we hope that they will learn to interact with people across borders and share their stories.
Child domestic workers and low-income family children make up a large part of the urban population in Bangladesh but are hardly ever talked about. They don’t have access to computers and limited knowledge of internet. We hope teaching them to use internet and social media will strengthen their knowledge of social matters and their own ambitions.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
Sabhanaz Rashid Diya:
http://18forlife.wordpress.com/
http://sabhanazrashiddiya.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/diya880
https://www.facebook.com/srdiya
Mushfiqur Rahman:
https://twitter.com/Mushfiq128
https://www.facebook.com/mushfiq.rahman
Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo:
https://twitter.com/KaziAgaz
https://www.facebook.com/ktagaz
Amiya Atahar:
http://fantasizing-reality.blogspot.com/
http://madkoffee.com/
https://twitter.com/AmiyaAtahar
https://www.facebook.com/Amiya.Atahar
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
The stories will focus on the children and youth's everyday lives, their work and their aspirations. A large part of the project will focus on teaching them some basic methods of communication, and storytelling will be the primary tool. The stories may be in forms of text (letters or essays to be posted on a blog) and visual media such as photos and videos taken by both the One Degree Initiative Foundation team and the youth themselves.
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.
Existing partnerships include a small pool of domestic child workers we have worked with before through a project called “Haate Khori” (http://1di.org/activities/haate-khori-2/) and schools for children from low-income families such as Surovi, where we have conducted several projects, including a library project (http://1di.org/activities/library-project-january-2014/). We hope to strengthen these partnerships by introducing the children to people from different countries, and maybe establish a relationship between the communities.
We hope to make future partnerships with local internet providers and/or telecommunication companies.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
We are aiming to train 50 children and youth aged 8 to 18, with a small portion being child domestic workers. By the end of the project, we hope to establish internet facilities at the school(s) we will be working with and encourage the trainees to carry the practice forward for the younger students.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
We will mostly focus on blogging, social media and visual communication (photos and videos) as members of the core team are experienced bloggers and experts in both mainstream and social media.
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
The workshops will be held at apartment buildings where the child domestic workers are situated and at the schools we are partnering with. For the training purpose, we will have a projector and a screen, 2 laptops, 2 tablets and multiple mobile phones. USB modems and wireless internet will be used with connection speeds ranging from 512kbps to 1mbps.
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?
As we have worked with these children and their employers/schools before, we have established a steady relationship built on trust, which allows us to work on the children’s development.
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
The child domestic workers’ employers may put up a resistance to us providing the children/youth with tools to use internet or social media regularly or maintain communication with their friends abroad after the end of the project, as it may hamper their duties at work. As a result, they may fire the children, who are often the sole breadwinners for their families.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
The failure standard of the project for the primary participants will be whether 50% of the trainees have retained the knowledge and practice of using social media as a tool for communication with the international community.
The evaluation of the project's impact on indirect beneficiaries, e.g. students or child domestic workers who are able to receive the training from the primary participants, will depend on whether the establishment of internet facilities was successful and the purpose of the use (or abuse) of social media among the indirect beneficiaries.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
June 1 – 14, 2014: Approach apartment buildings, schools and other stakeholders (internet providers and telecommunication companies.)
June 15 – 21, 2014: Design training curriculum according to participating children and schools.
June 22 – 30, 2014: Reach out to international branches of One Degree Initiative Foundation in Nepal, Canada, Iraq, Australia and USA.
July 1 – 15, 2014: Introductory workshops at apartment buildings and schools.
July 16 – 31, 2014: Training sessions including storytelling through different digital media.
August 1 – 15, 2014: Exhibition of first round of stories at local outlets and international communities both physically and digitally.
August 16 – 31, 2014: Setting up internet facilities at schools.
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
Internet modems: 5,000 BDT = 64 USD
Internet connections (1 month): 9,000 BDT = 116 USD
Projector and screen (1 month): 30,000 BDT = 385 USD
Transportation to and from the apartment buildings and schools = 10,000 BDT = 128 USD
Seed money for schools’ internet facilities = 100,000 BDT = 1282 USD
Buffer (11%) = 16,940 BDT = 217 USD
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
Rising Voices can support the project by sharing the children’s stories and helping us reach out to more international communities, especially organizations working with underprivileged children with whom we can set up a partnership to bridge the gap between the children.
Contact name
Amiya Atahar
Organization
One Degree Initiative Foundation
