The Hivos R.O.O.M. (Resource of Open Minds) program is inspired by its focus on Civic Rights in a Digital Age with a focus on Critical, Counter-Hegemonic Free Expression, and more specifically its objective is to contribute to diversification of dialogue, debate and dissent in society engaged in a content creation and content conservation strategy achieved through Animation & Archiving.
CASDI Trust’s Thamsanqa Maphosa was selected to participate at Hivo’s R.O.O.M. Animation and Archiving Workshop from the 15th to the 25th of November 2021 hosted by Hivos and facilitated by Nafuna TV (Animation) and Stimulus Africa (Archiving).
In terms of participation and contribution to the workshop, Hivos had the following to say:
“Thamsanqa Maphosa established a Non-Profit focused on promoting access to appropriate SRH and GBV information and services for young people in an environment free of stigma and discrimination. His work includes research on sexual and reproductive health, GBV, and Mental Health issues affecting young people, including young key populations such as young sex workers. Thamsanqa brought many insights to our workshop, particularly towards Archiving, defining our overall goal as “To preserve institutional memory (portfolio of evidence), impact, lessons learned and to assist reflection for future programming”. In this video, Thamsanqa takes a creative approach in using stop motion for animation.” – Source: Hivos Regional Office Southern Africa Facebook Page.
Below is the final animated explainer video produced by Thamsanqa Maphosa as the final product of the capacity building exercise:
The main outline of the Animation Training is as follows:
1. Digital Foundations
2. Storytelling
3. Introduction to Video Production
4. Introduction to Animated Videos
5. Producing Explainers
The Archiving part of the workshop focused on the following:
1. Digital Archiving Collaborative Problem Mapping
2. Introduction to the Stimulus Digital Strategy Canvas
3. Structured approaches to consider in the digital archiving strategy (Human Centered Design)
It is important to note that this training highlighted the need for content creators as well as civic organizations to transition and adapt to new, innovative digital technologies in order to efficiently and cost-effectively reach their target groups, whilst delivering their messages in an accurate and sustainable way. The advent of COVID-19 led to the development of innovative and cost effective ways of working remotely without compromising productivity, and they all relied heavily on digital platforms. These new ways of working will certainly remain in place post COVID-19, therefore the main takeaway message from the training is for organizations to transition from old ways of handling information and reaching target groups, and move to the digital age, creating relevant content that will reach desired numbers within a reasonable amount of time at less cost.