How was it done?

This was a very short project with minimal funding, 3 days in total were spent with the group. On the first day, after inviting them to take part in the project, we did the name game and the disappearing game (see handbook section 2) to give people a chance to see if they might be interested in taking it further. Of course, they did  and we organised to come back a few days later when they were all free.

After some more preliminary Participatory Video games and exercises on the second day, they did a little drama about going to visit a sick neighbour who prefers to visit the witchdoctor than go the hospital to get herself tested. The visitors persuade her to go the hospital, and then did some household chores to help her out! This was lots of fun and concluded our second session.

The third and final session, just towards the end of the short trip, was amazingly productive. When we arrived they had already been discussing stuff that they wanted to film, but we did a proper planning session nonetheless. They sang a

song, said a prayer, introduced the group, told a few personal stories (those who wanted to) and then filmed their various activities that they do as a group; composting, growing vegetables to share and keep themselves healthy, selling blue gum trees to raise money for a common account to help one another in times of need, visiting the sick and helping them with chores, hiring a maize field and tending to it communally, teaching each other skills like literacy, generally supporting each other, uplifting each other's spirits, creating a non-discriminating environment, and changing attitudes in the community.

They filmed all these things in a very lively way so that one person would talk about the activity whilst the others would DO it in the background - eg

composting, tending to the maize field, teaching, doing chores for the sick. We screened the material back to them at the end and got some filmed feedback.