Video is a powerful medium that can help communicate and educate to improve people’s lives. Let us take a look at the simple instructions to creating an impactful video
Rohey Njie, Senior Program Officer for the Directorate of Health Promotion & Education with the Ministry of Health in Gambia, participated in a Video Education Workshop with OMPT three years ago and now uses her video creation skills in community health.
Enjoy this recap from our Executive Director Matt and Development Manager Andy detailing our most recent project in Lodwar, Kenya! 60-70% of Lodwar's inhabitants are illiterate; this makes our project even more important! We partnered with Africare to provide their staff with the video capabilities necessary to produce and disseminate important content. Africare now has increased capacity through training and video equipment to reach disadvantaged people with best practices and health information.
When OMPT goes out to complete a project, we only get the chance to work with members of the local community for a few days, but what happens after we leave? The impact of video education and ICT4D (information and communication technologies for development) remains positive and impactful far past the end of our workshop. We love hearing back from partners that we have worked with in the past who are still implementing technology to educate and promote positive behavior change.
Two of our most successful projects to date! Matt and Kristin spent two weeks in back-to-back Video Education Workshops, first in Ethiopia and then in Kenya.
“They had next to nothing, but what struck me most was their generosity. They offered what little they had—their huts, their people, their time—to allow us to create a temporary film set in the middle of their living spaces.”
What does a Video Education Workshop look like for an OMPT staff member? Follow along in Kristin’s journey in Ethiopia with her week long travel diaries!
Ethiopia is one of the world's least developed countries and has encountered food insecurity for its population routinely. The government and numerous NGOs have attempted to eradicate hunger through government programs and land cultivation. In July 2019, OMPT is teaming up with Arba Minch University in southern Ethiopia to teach Ph.D. students how to create videos aimed at improving mother and infant nutrition.
The ongoing developments in Sudan have made it a priority target for OMPT’s intervention. We will be training NGO staff and trainers from Sudan, so that they can then take this knowledge back to their home countries and empower them to make a difference in their communities. Keep reading for a timeline overview of the events in Sudan .
For our first project of 2019, OMPT worked with World Vision in Bamako, Mali, a west African country. OMPT trained World Vision staff how to create videos that documented the success of the new water towers, bore holes and latrines that World Vision installed last year. These new improvements will bring better sanitation and health to the schoolchildren and local community.
This was my third trip to Africa and each time I return from this beautiful continent I’m struck by the same thought: people are people everywhere. Regardless of where you live and in what conditions, people have the same desires, are excited by the same things and experience the same emotions.
We’ve just finished our first workshop of 2019 and are excited to share our experiences with all of you. Stay tuned for updates from Matt and Kristin as they get arrive back home from Mali. In the meantime, here are some photos from the project!
Last week, OMPT’s Matt York and Kristin Henderson traveled to Bamako, Mali to host our second workshop in the country in the last two months. This was OMPT’s third time working with World Vision, a faith-based organization that provides humanitarian aid throughout the world.
Matt reflects back on our September workshops in Burkina Faso and Malawi and looks forward to a busy end of the year, with all the trials and tribulations that entails.
September 27th was, as they say, the first day of the rest of my life. Trite though the expression may be, I finally understood what it meant firsthand. As I boarded the first of many planes that would take me through New York, to Johannesburg, then finally on to my final destination, Lilongwe, Malawi, I remember thinking that I had absolutely no idea what my life would look like for the next eight days.
In September 2018, OMPT traveled to Burkina Faso to implement a workshop with UNICEF partners. Matt and I were on the ground in the capital city, Ouagadougou (pronounced Wagoo) to facilitate the workshop. Burkina Faso is an entirely French speaking country, but luckily our Local Video Trainers were fluent in both French and English.
While we wait for our coworkers to get back and tell us all about their time in Burkina Faso and with UNICEF, we thought it might be a good time to share some photos from our most recent workshop. If you weren’t aware, OMPT traveled to Burkina Faso in West Africa to host a Video Education Workshop with UNICEF where we trained several different NGOs on video production.
Our second stop in our September trip will be in Malawi, this time working with CARE. Our workshop in Malawi will be our first time both working in Malawi and with CARE. Unlike most of the countries we travel to, Malawi’s official language is English, allowing our English-speaking staff to more directly engage the workshop’s participants.
Partnering with UNICEF (United Nations International Fund for Children), we will be returning to Burkina Faso at the end of September. As you may remember from our July newsletter, this trip was originally scheduled for mid-summer but had to be postponed. While this is our second time traveling to Burkina Faso, this will be our first time working with UNICEF. We are incredibly excited for the opportunity to work with an organization as large and influential as UNICEF and look forward to future partnerships.
A persuasion pattern emerges in partner-created behavior change videos.