What is the initiative and where is it implemented (city or country, for example)?
Voices Beyond Walls is a digital storytelling project that enables marginalized youths to produce video clips expressing their cultural identity and personal narratives. The project is implemented in Palestinian refugee camps.
How was the initiative established? How was it implemented?
Voices Beyond Walls (VBW) was founded as a model for digital media expression for marginalized youths in refugee camps. Developed as a non-profit organization, VBW supports expression and advocacy among young Palestinian refugees through digital storytelling workshops, media production and global dissemination of their work (Sawhney, 2009).
The initiative is currently run by Palestinian and international volunteers, media technologists, photographers, film-makers, educators and activists. According to the founder (Sawhney, 2009), VBW can be adapted to support marginalized communities and impoverished environments anywhere.
Which stakeholders are involved in the design and/or implementation of the initiative? Which sectors do they represent?
The initiative has partnered closely with Palestinian youth community centres. Adult volunteers at the centres usually undergo intensive pre-workshop training sessions lasting 2–3 days during which they are encouraged to provide feedback and input on tailoring the curriculum to suit the needs of youth in their community. The team also conducts evaluations during follow-up site visits (Sawhney, 2009).
What are the impacts of the initiative in terms of facilitating lifelong learning? Whom does it benefit and how?
Since 2006, in collaboration with youth centres and volunteer facilitators, VBW has conducted approximately twelve workshops with young participants (aged 10–16) in 6–7 refugee camps. A typical workshop lasts ten days; a team of trainers works closely with 20–25 youths in small groups, weaving together original stories, drama, poetry, photography, music and cinematography to produce digital media shorts. The videos aim to express youth’s perspectives on Palestinian history and culture, connecting these to current everyday life in refugee camps and youth’s dreams and aspirations.
Dozens of adult facilitators were trained between 2006 and 2008 to help hundreds of youth produce their videos. The initiative employs a cascade model where most workshops are run by the facilitators trained in the previous years to ensure the transferability of skills and path to sustainability over time. The individual centres create new learning and production techniques in their workshops to tailor the trainings to the needs of local communities, as well as contribute to the over network of digital storytelling programs. A selection of digital media shorts is available on the VBW website (Voices Beyond Walls, 2009).
The goal of the initiative is to empower young refugees to connect with their history and culture and improve awareness of the issues experienced in refugee camps. Regular showcasing and screenings of the media shorts amplify their voices within their communities and reach out to international audiences. Numerous international film festivals, universities and community learning centres abroad screen the selected digital shorts to disseminate the stories as first-hand experiences within the refugee camps.
Sawhney, N., 2009. Voices Beyond Walls: The role of digital storytelling for empowering marginalized youth in refugee camps. Como, IDC 09. [Online] Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1551788.1551866 {Accessed 25 July 2021].
Voices Beyond Walls, 2009. Youth visions of Jerusalem. [Online] Available at: www.voicesbeyondwalls.org/projects/youth_visions_jerusalem.html [Accessed 5 April 2021].