We’re not leaving the continent of Africa quite yet. An inspiring project came to my attention from Uganda, Rwanda’s neighbour to the north.
The project is called ZoomUganda and it uses the little-known though increasing prevalent technique called “photovoice” to bring attention to Matale, a community in southern Uganda where more than half the children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.
Created by Caroline C. Wang and Mary Ann Burris in 1992 to enable rural women of Yunnan Province, China to have a say in policymaking affecting them, “photovoice” enables individuals who are typically subjects, to be creators, as they document their world.
Sponsored by the Harambee Centre in Portland, Oregon, ZoomUganda involves 12 girls who were given 12 cameras and 24 hours to tell their stories. Another part of the project was for the girls to keep journals wherein they captured their hopes and dreams. Proceeds from the project will benefit St. Andrew’s Secondary School in Matale, Uganda.
Photovoice is a powerful tool for organizations, whether working in the Global South or in the Deep South, to help citizens take control over how the world perceives them.
If the technique seems a good fit for your organization, then build on your photovoice project by integrating social media such as video and other interactive web capabilities to seriously engage online visitors and connect them to your organization’s vision for social change.
Remember that–where social media is concerned–there are many ways to tell a story.
You know, we talk a lot about using all the different social media tools that are available to not-for-profits, tools like Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. But with the plethora of Web 2.0 doodads out there, it’s easy to lose focus and to start creating and maintaining your various accounts for their own sake. How many of us have discovered that our Facebook friendships and updates seem to have taken over our lives until we’ve forgotten why we signed up in the first place?
So here’s something to remember: whatever part of the social media beast you’re using needs to be integrally connected to your organization’s website or, in other words, your home base. Your website is the official “spokesperson” of your cause, the dependable voice that brings together all the Tweets, blogs and video playlists, and synthesizes them into a harmonious whole.
Now, I could go on forever and ever about this, but instead of boring all of you (and myself), I want to point you to a fantastic example of a website that seamlessly combines all sorts of social media. The Men Who Killed Me is a brand new book of photographs and testimonials from survivors of the Rwandan genocide. The proceeds from this book, which will be hitting retailers across Canada in April, will be donated to Mukomeze, a charitable organization established to improve the lives of girls and women who have survived sexual violence.
The Men Who Killed Me, edited by Anne-Marie de Brouwer and Sandra Ka Hon Chu, photographs by Samer Muscati
It goes without saying that this website and book are extraordinary, but what makes it a picture-perfect example of social media use is how organic and vital each component is to the overall message. When you’re browsing through, take note of how the authors have used Flickr, YouTube and the blog to drive home the reminder that the Rwandan genocide must not be forgotten.
I’ll leave you with just this one thing: a video from The Men Who Killed Me, showing survivors dancing with joy in Kigali. It doesn’t get much better than this.
I know this isn’t the kind of serious social media fare we typically present on Go Small (and, you better believe we’re serious!), but I thought I’d make an exception for St. Patrick’s Day. Although I’m not Irish, I do enjoy a pint of Guinness on occasion along with a woeful Irish song like this one.
To shed light on a little-known and increasingly prevalent social issue, CANGRANDS, a Canadian organization supporting grandmothers, grandfathers, and kinship families as they struggle to keep or develop family ties has released a video on YouTube (thanks to the support of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration).
Originally airing on CTV’sW-FIVE, the two-part programme reveals the roadblocks grandparents who parent their children’s children encounter from living on fixed incomes, addressing their grandchildren’s health concerns (e.g. sexual abuse, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Attention Deficit Disorder) to dealing with their own health problems.
In the video, Paul Muldoon who produced a study on the financial pressures of raising grandchildren talks about the financial toll on grandparents. “These grandparents are saving us as taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “And they’re doing that out of a sense of commitment, they’re doing that out of a sense of love and we need to be there to help and support them.”
PART 1
PART 2
According to the W-FIVE documentary, 65,000 children in Canada are being raised by kin, while in the US, the Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey shows that more than six million grandparents live with grandchildren. In both countries, the numbers are increasing.
Making use of professionally produced TV (or other) videos about your organization (with permission!) is a nifty and cost-effective way to further your organization’s message and goals. Remember that it’s good to recycle and reuse. Way to go CANGRANDS!
Not-for-profits are often reluctant to trade old ways of communicating their message such as newsletters, direct mail and print advertising for newer methods such as podcasting, e-newsletters, blogs and virtual worlds. And who can blame them. After all, your members might love your monthly newsletter and look forward to getting it in the mail. They might dig its old design and identify with its homespun flavour.
Let’s get one thing straight. Here at Go Small we’re not fans of throwing it all out for the newest, most up-to-date media. This is not a spring fashion show where last year’s pumps and skirts are carted off to the local thrift store to make way for edgier, more vibrant fare if that’s not what folks want.
A perfect example. The other day I was sitting in a local favourite café (again) when a piece of green paper on which was drawn a bottle of hooch (or something?) caught my eye. What made me pick it up amongst all the other pamphlets and advertising postcards sitting on the table beside the pitchers of cream, milk, and sugar packets was how simple it was.
It made me think about how ingenious its creators were to advertise their podcast using a tried and true traditional media method, that of an announcement about something (in this case, a podcast) photocopied on colour paper and distributed to stores, restaurants and cafés in the community.
If there’s a lesson in this it’s to mix old with new. No need to completely substitute one form for another just because it’s expected. The key here is to keep it fresh and interesting.
Mostly, we here at Go Small like to blog about innovative ways not-for-profits are using social media to communicate their message. Then there are times when I feel a need to write about what I think doesn’t work and why. Take Emily Carr University’s new logo.
My fiancé and I were enjoying a café mocha at a new, East Vancouver café called Les Faux Bourgeois when we met a graphic designer and Emily Carr alumnus, also checking out the new spot. I couldn’t help myself from asking him the nagging question, “What do you think of the art school’s new logo?”
The three of us laughed in unison and then said, almost at the same time, “What’s that about?”
That led us to a conversation about “branding” and how the word is mostly misused or misinterpreted. “It’s all about asking the right questions,” said the designer. We agreed that if you can’t ask your client the right questions, it’s difficult to arrive at the right identity for that particular organization.
The new Emily Carr logo, while fresh, alterable, and on-the-move in a gentle Japanese brush stroke sort of way, tells me nothing of the university’s (formally art college) past, only giving me a glimpse of how it sees itself moving in space and time toward the future. Presented on the university homepage as an animation (reflecting the growing new media presence at the school), the new logo is described as “…organic in nature allowing it to grow with the University as we move, transition, and respond to the inherent nature of artists and designers who desire a variety of interpretations and visual stimuli.”
For me, this description begs the question of how Emily Carr differs from any other art college. What does Emily Carr have to offer students and the rest of the world as an art school of the Pacific Northwest and, growing from a very different artistic mindset and history?
