Our Stories

On Friday, with the hepatitis outbreak in northern Uganda spreading into new districts, I began looking at how a UNICEF initiative called Our Stories could be used as a tool for behavior change in an emergency setting. I conducted an informal discussion group meeting about using Our Stories as a tool for sensitization and social mobilization with members of a Primary School in Padibe camp. The Australian woman who coordinates the project has lived in Kitgum for over 15 years, running schools for 8,000 children during the worst phases of the civil war. As recent as two years ago, Kitgum was brutally attacked by LRA rebels, who are notorious for using mutilation as a tool for terror while kidnapping children to be employed as child soldiers and sex slaves.

The Our Stories project was originally conceived as a way to collect, preserve, and share online the stories of the world's people and their cultures and communities. Because current functionality requires an internet connection, I decided to utilize another UNICEF communications tool under development, Rapid SMS, for collecting audio over mobile phones. Surprisingly, national mobile companies have managed to blanket much of the country with coverage, giving you a signal in even the remotest of camps. This audio would then be saved on a central server where I could access at a later date.

I tested the program using a cheap mobile phone with four students from Childcare Padibe. With very little prompting, they recorded very informative stories about health and hygiene in their community, and how it related to the hepatitis outbreak. I had hoped to get stories that would make excellent components for health related radio broadcasts, likely increasing accountability and ownership of both the message and the crisis. After many years of dependency on foreign aid, some IDP communities are unwilling to lift a finger without payment, waiting for outside ‘assistance’ for simple things they should be doing themselves. The children did not let me down.

(In addition to recording the stories, I gave the children my camera to document the process themselves. All photos below are taken by the children I was working with.)

Empowering potential beneficiaries with a voice in both emergency settings and development is essential if the goal is any measure of sustainability. Too often, organizations come and try to dictate to communities what is in their best interest. They ignore local capacities and often rely on completely inappropriate technologies. I have been pushing for a more participatory role in social mobilization and now believe that the Our Stories project can play a role in this.

I spoke with Ugandan teachers about the project. They felt that it could be a very simple, yet effective tool to empower and build confidence in students, give a voice to the community, reinforce important messages, and create accountability ("it is OUR students who are saying this!").

This could easily be replicated at a larger scale with minimal inputs. It seems like at every school somebody has access to a mobile phone. All that would need to be provided was minimal credit. (With 1,500 shillings, or a $1, we recorded 5 minutes worth of stories').

At the moment, I am focusing most of my attention in a slightly different direction, looking at how best to strengthen general monitoring activities. However, I firmly believe that monitoring should have a strong participatory component, and that these two projects are mutually beneficial.

Tomorrow, if I get my security clearance, I plan to travel to the camps in the evening with a ‘social mobilization van’ that plays health related film shows. I want to record impressions, thoughts and reactions to the film, and see about broadcasting them on upcoming radio shows. I hope to convince those in high places that this is a simple but effective method to effect behavioral change.