How Community Produced Media Can Help Local People Share and Learn more about the Changes to Village Life on the Mekong
Local partners of the Wetlands Alliance and their local communities in Northeast Cambodia, in Kratie and Stung Treng, have organized a community produced media (CPM) team, which is supported and backstopped by the WorldFish Center. The teams were established in 2010 and consist of Salaphoum researchers and local NGO partner staff. The teams believe that CPM can play a very important role in documenting experiences of local issues such as climate change to disseminate their stories to a wider audience. The CMP teams in Stung Treng and Kratie are coordinated by the Culture and Environment Preservation Association (CEPA) and the Community Economic Development (CED) respectively, have been trained to produce their own films. However, they recently made a request to WorldFish Center for more support in the planning of participatory videos.
The WorldFish Center responded and organized 4-day training-workshop for the CPM teams from 23-26 August 2011 in Stung Treng province. An external resource person on community produced media (participatory video) was engaged for this training and mentoring session. The topics covered in the training-workshop included how to develop the concept of a participatory video (PV), how to plan a PV, and how to shoot,edit and distribute the film.
This training-workshop began by reflecting on the experiences of making the previous film on climate change adaptations which looked at worked well and some of the mistakes that were made. The discussion highlighted where and how the CPM teams can improve their film making and in particularly how to improve the planning. Training was then provided on video planning, shooting and editing. During the training-workshop all participants had chance to practice producing their own films and to test their new skills in planning and structuring videos. The films produced highlighted local adaptation experiences to climate change. The CPM teams from both provinces now plan to use participatory video as a tool to document their own issues and experiences for sharing and communicating with other communities and relevant stakeholders at local and regional level. The practice video produced can be watched here.