Local communities are often best placed to understand how to live in harmony with their environment. The following videos, articles, photostories and case studies are examples of different communities around the world using Participatory Video to organise, mobilise and express themselves in order to put local knowledge at the centre of natural resource management.
A group of 11 farmers, members of the Bukonzo Joint Co-operative, came together for a participatory video project to plan and shoot a video about their local environment, before creating a screening in the community to raise debate around sustainable agricultural practice.
In this participatory video project a film is made by 11 members of the Ericaville Farming Trust. A complicated process led to the participants going out into their community to enable a group of youth, elders and women to come together to tell their stories through a participatory video process, and community screening. The video tells the story of their journey together as a community. The past displacement from the West Coast and their resettlement along the coast of the Southern Cape, South Africa, their longing to own land and to farm became a reality after a wait of 30 years.
In this participatory video project a group of people in Chanya (Malawi) explore key issues affecting them as individuals and the wider community, in relation to climate change locally and/or globally. Video was used as a tool by which the subject could be explored and perspectives shared amongst the participants themselves and with the wider community and beyond.
In this participatory video project 12 cocoa farmers made a video, which focused on the negative impacts of deforestation. They succeeded in generating a video that carries the seldom heard voices of Ivorian cocoa farmers, and clearly demonstrates the problems that they are experiencing as a result of climate change. The completed video has the potential to raise awareness of how climate change is impacting on people in this region and may serve to generate interest in supporting efforts to mitigate these problems.
In this participatory video project a team of coffee farmers identifies and documents sustainable land management practices through video, which could then be used to share knowledge locally, and potentially further afield. Participants were selected by the organisers from two neighbouring coffee co-operatives. InsightShare facilitators helped the group to identify the main threats to farmers, and look at changes in the local environment and weather. They produced a video, which was subsequently made into 3 short videos: ‘Climate Change’, ‘Land Management’ and ‘Land Subdivision’.
In June and July 2012, eleven farmers from the Cariango Commune in the province of Kwanza Sul, Angola, took part in a participatory video project to explore the impacts of climate change on their livelihoods. After much debate the group decided to focus on the issue of drought as something common to all, and to use the video to explore different ways in which it is impacting the four different communities, by gathering local ideas and stories.
Our PV methods have demonstrated to be ideal for working with small-scale farmers to enable farmer-to-farmer sharing of innovations and experiences, and connecting those same farming communities with the outside world and key stakeholders including policymakers, industry representatives and NGOs. This article describes some recent examples from our work with farming communities around the world.
Commissioned case study prepared for the Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester, UK, for their Climate Change, Innovation & ICTs Project.
InsightShare presented a PV M&E case study in the Knowledge Management Impact Challenge and was selected as one of the top case studies, participating in the UN Conference.