Voces Comunes (Common Voices) is a communicational training project for the youth of indigenous and afro descendant communities in Colombia. In which through: A) An 8 days workshop, B) A continuos technical and theoretical accompaniment and C) A second workshop (a 4 days re enforcement workshop), the communities create their own communication collective and learn to produce their own content and media. Our goal is that giving them this knowledge and the necesary equipment, the youth represents communities interest and express themselves freely, and use communication and ICT as a tool for change, social inclusion, fostering self-recognition and community empowerment. Voces Comunes is also a place on the Internet where the ethnical minorities, that are often invisible to its governments and predominant cultures, can communicate, connect, interact, gather and share all the content produced by them as a result from the project, making a noticeable impact.
Voces Comunes is a communication project developed for the youth of indigenous and afro-descendent communities in Colombia. Through practical workshops in their territories and continous accompaniment, they learn how to operate the computer, audio and video equipment that the project provides them, the communities will acknowledge and strengthen their communication skills with the use of the ICTs. All this through: A) An 8 days workshop, B) A continuos technical and theoretical accompaniment, C) A second workshop (a 4 days re enforcement workshop), D) the communities create their own communication collective and learn to produce their own content and media, allowing them to share their visions, cultures and processes in a better way, a way of their own.
Communication is a powerful tool that contributes to social inclusion, fostering self-recognition and community empowerment. It provides communities with the possibility to design and disseminate messages not just about their cosmovision but also using their own language and symbols. If such messages emerge from each community, they will respond to their particular context and, therefore, they will contribute to actual empowerment and self-advocacy. If youth of ethnical communities have access to the new technologies they will be able to produce accurate information about themselves. Moreover, they will have the power to make visible their experiences, needs and strategies to cope with conflicts. Through this, they can make their voices heard and find echo in other communities. Voces Comunes, being a network in itself, understands networking as a suitable and desirable outcome towards the strengthening of local and global relationships.
Due to our focus on the youth of ethnical minorities, Voces Comunes support community objectives related with their youth as: A) The participants of the project in each community strengthens their role and commitment within, they become the voices of their communities. B) The partincipants find the importance of communication as a motor for expressing their realities and as a tool for preserving their culture and surviving the challenges they face. C) In zones of violence, armed conflict and paramilitarism, the young participants of Voces Comunes have a new and different life option. D) Using the knowledge in communication acquired in the workshops, they can have an additional source of economical income. E) The young participants assume a new roll within their communities: they become the teachers in the communication for the generations that follows.
Voces Comunes has a website in which disseminates the contents produce by the communities and encourage the visibility, social inclusion, free expressions and interactions of each one. It allows communities participating in the project to share their content and find out what others have produced. In this website they will make evident problems they have in common, at the same time that they will identify successful conflict resolution strategies to reproduce. Our goal through this website is to consolidate a network in which the communities that are part of the project can post and share their own content and see the productions that others communities made. A place where they can comment, learn from each other experiences and share them with the world. With Voces Comunes, the indigenous and afro-descendent communities of the region will take advantage of Internet to be visible, heard, known and included.
The final version of our website (www.vocescomunes.com) will be online in two weeks, meanwhile please watch our videos: https://vimeo.com/user25657508 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ_Xy3WCI0mWBJlntbgaa3g/videos
- Establish communications collectives formed by young members of each community. We've achieved this by conforming the ideal group of young people as one of the first activities in the workshop.
- Sustain a project in which indigenous and afro-descent communities use communication as a tool for change, social inclusion and community empowerment. We've achieved this with the workshops, its practical exercises and motivational talks on the power of communication, as well as following every step of their learning process.
- Familiarize participants with the possibilities offered by the ICTs so they can produce and disseminate their own communicational products. We've achieved this with the workshops and by resolving every doubt they have.
- Establish the Voces Comunes network, a site in which many ethnical communities can connect, be seen, heard and included. A network that will help them strengthen their survival processes and life projects, and allow them to know the ones that others face. We achieve this by a continuos update of the Voces Comunes site and the interaction of its social networks.
- Disseminate the media content produce by each community in different platforms. We've achieved this A) through screenings in each community to show the productions the collectives made throughout the workshop, B) through Voces Comunes’ site and social media, and C) through applications to film festivals.
- Provide each community with basic equipment so they have the tools to produce their media content. The 4 communities attended so far have received a basic communicational kit.
Voces Comunes' site is still under construction, therefore the last couple of months we’ve focused on the interaction trough social media (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram) and, our face-to-face workshops. Our Facebook page has been the most popular form of interaction, mainly because everyone can see any type of content (video, photos or information) in one place.
- Communication and free expression should be more democratic because everyone can tell stories and everyone has stories to tell.
- Ethnical communities want and are ready to tell their own stories. They don’t allways need others to talk about their realities.
- Even tough Internet offers many different content, the digital users are interested in what the ethnical communities have to say and in seeing them in equal conditions (they can also be media producers).
-Communication is not only useful to inform, but to generate social changes.
- The indigenous and afro-descendant communities of Latin America are facing similar realities and challenges in order to survive. This is why they want to learn from the survival processes that other communities face.
- Like us, the ethnical minorities also have a voice and want to use it. As it has been said to us, they are planning to be the “best ancestors of history”, therefore they want to leave their legacy and show their culture, cosmovision and social problems through the use of ICTs.
- Even though the young representatives of the communities have not grown up using the ICTs, they know the importance they have and are eager to learn how to use them. Its commitment in this matter can be seen in the videos they’ve produce by themselves since we developed the workshops.
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