RocketTheme Joomla Templates
     
Digital Storytelling for Advocacy

Image USK is undertaking an innovative approach towards addressing the issues facing the children and youth with which it works. Instead of USK serving as a medium between the children and government, this project seeks to raise their voices directly by empowering them to speak out about issues affecting their lives.

 

To achieve this, USK has been training 17 of its beneficiaries how to write good blogs, take good photographs, and put this material online for the entire world to see. Some of the issues that the students have raised include police harassment, poverty, environmental degradation, drug use and the post-election violence.

The project embraces the concept of child and youth participation and strives to be a youth-led project in the future. USK and the students will be standing up for their rights and for issues affecting them on the local, national and international level. This includes advocacy related to serious policy reform as well as changing negative public attitudes that tend to hold the children and youth back. Thus, this project gives the students a chance to counter the overwhelmingly negative stereotypes that they face, especially those living and working on the streets. 


The students come from USK Street Children and Youth Associations, non-formal schools and its informal skills training program. They were selected based on several criteria, including level of enthusiasm for participation and responsibility. View the Students page for more information about each student and links to their blogs and photographs.      

The project has been running since June 2008 thanks to the Jessica Jennifer Cohen Foundation and USK partner, The Advocacy Project, which sent Kristina Rosinsky to implement this project with USK. She has been the principal project trainer and will continue training the 10 best students from September to November 2008 so that come December, the students are capable of training others on their own. To ensure sustainability, she will also be training two additional students on a full time basis so that they can lead the project in the future. The next phase of the project will begin in January 2009 and USK seeks to acquire long term funding to sustain the project for years to come.

How You Can Get Involved
 
[ Back ]

 

 

 

Our Partners