December 10, 2011–Catalytic Communities’ Video Journalism Trainings have just come to a successul close. The two-part program included both the training of 50 youth from across Rio de Janeiro as part of the Adobe Youth Voices program, and an additional thorough training of 6 highly dedicated young journalists supplementing their CatComm Community Journalism course which occurred in the first semester.
Video-Journalism Training with Adobe Youth Voices
The 50 youth trained in association with the Adobe Youth Voices program were from the neighborhoods of Sepetiba, Parque da Cidade, and Muzema. These three communities were carefully selected for their shared characteristic of “lack of visibility.” All three are for the most part safe communities, and overlooked in different ways by public officials. But they differ markedly in terms of access to the city. Sepetiba is a rapidly expanding coastal area of the city in Rio’s extreme southwest region where low-income residents of favelas being evicted by the public sector or market expansion are settling; Parque da Cidade and Muzema are near highly affluent established or growing areas of the city; and Muzema has a charming street that has been targeted for eviction because of the need to dredge a canal (though this is highly questionable).
The course plan was built upon concepts of youth media learned from CatComm’s participation in an eight week course with Adobe Youth Voices. The focus was the youth’s self expression, ensuring that youth chose a topic of their own, and then orienting them to transmit this message through video. Each group had brainstorming and discussion sessions about the community and communication in general, which led to defining a topic and message, filming sessions in the community, and editing sessions with Adobe Premiere Elements.
In Sepetiba, youth produced videos tackling the difficulties of public transportation for students, poorly paved roads in the community, the lack of public attention and investment in the region, and trash on Sepetiba’s beaches. (See our post specifically on the Sepetiba course here.) In Parque da Cidade, production teams worked on videos that profiled a community NGO, Projeto Parque Vivo, and that voiced community concerns about the abandonment of the nearby park. In Muzema, youth produced videos dealing with forced evictions in the community, the implications of building on marshlands, and local Taekwondo project, Kebra Tabú.
Community Video-Journalism Training
CatComm provided a separate yet simultaneous four-week video journalism training for 6 highly dedicated students from our first semester Community Journalism course, including more intensive sessions on preparation for production, filming, and editing, which led to each student producing her or his own media piece, accompanied by a written article. In addition to producing their own multimedia pieces, each CatComm youth journalist accompanied and supported a production team for the Adobe Youth Voices-inspired course detailed above from the beginning brainstorming stages through to editing and finalizing media pieces.
Our youth journalists produced the following multimedia stories: The College Olympus by Hosana Souza, Dancer Gives Back to Youth Center in Campo Grande by Saulo Araújo, Vila Autódromo Responds to Latest Threat of Eviction by João Vitor dos Santos, Birimbau: Environmental Awareness by Valnei Succo, Consumers in the Favela by Luiz Henrique Ribeiro, and Public and Private Schools, Student Opinions by Andréia Coutinho.
