August 29, 2017 Partners Meeting

Owned by Dana Ayotte
Last updated: Sept 11, 2017
6 min read

Present: James, Alan, Michelle, Gregor, Dana, Jess, Liam

Storytelling to Address Information Gaps

  • James is going to be using the storytelling tool as one of the tools to raise the voices of young people with learning differences
  • Their voices are not heard, but there's also an information gap.
  • In a social justice situation, what information is missing out, what ways can we find that let these young people with learning differences have this information, how can we include them better?
  • What are some of the information tools that can support the participation of these young people?
  • Alan: what information gaps are present?
  • Young people aren't getting the info they need, what is it exactly they've missed?
  • James: as a young person you need information to participate in education, what do you need to participate with others?
    • Could be information on sexual and reproductive health
    • E.g. As a young girl experiencing her first menstrual cycle
  • What's the definition of young people and learning differences?
  • Who has the responsibility of taking care of this?
  • How can we connect the tool in these different contexts?
  • There are many actors involved in this, including youth organizations

Story Prompting

  • Dana: thanks to James for his feedback on the storytelling tool, prompt questions
  • We're dealing with people outside of the formal education structure
    • they may not know how to read and write
    • they may need a bit of guidance to tell their story
      Maybe their family is overprotective
    • "tell me a bit about yourself"
    • "what do you do", etc
    • "talk about ..."
  • Not direct questions, but in hearing about their environment, we can find out other things, but this way we can get direct stories from people at the margins and hear them speak
  • use question prompts as a feature - GIVE ME A PROMPT feature
  •  promoting critical analysis of storytelling
    • If a story is written to a prompt, we retain that somehow, if someone else may want to use that same prompt to write their own story 
    • Liam:
    • those prompts - when revealed throughout the audience process could also reveal very interesting info from the audience
      • they may think of a similiar or parallel thing that has happened to them (and they may be able to provide further insight from their experience)

      • empathetic "shoe-walking"

  • What's the most appropriate time, using standard narrative structure, maybe prompt the writer to fill in questions about what they would do in a certain situation

Story Installments and Tagging

  • Alan: what are different ways that we could thread different stories together?
  • What if they wanted to write a story in multiple parts?
    • Like chapters? Installments?
    • They might want to segment their story in some way
  • Discussion from the pinboard implementer about how people use free-tagging to organize their stories
    • They end up a lot like hashtags on twitter
    • Should we consider the use of hashtags?
    • More like an example in this case of a system being used to fill in a shortfall
    • Liam:
    • before we tell them how it was solved in this context
    • it may reveal all sorts of other methods
    • which may match the context of the audience but not the protagonist
    • it could generate a bunch of alternate endings or pathways through the narrative

Story telling and Inclusive Design

  • James tried to integrate a dimension of inclusive design in the storytelling - comments on the wiki
  • Dana: taking the three dimensions of inclusive design and applying them to the storytelling
  • Maybe commenting on the Wiki isn't the best format, perhaps we could take this discussion to the mailing list
  • James: we want to bring these stories from those who are marginalized into the decision making process, changing the way things are done, the way services are delivered, the way things work in their community

Feedback Mechanisms

  • Tracking the feedback mechanism

  • It's not just sharing stories, young people should feel a motivation that their story will be heard and that something will be done about it
  • Dana: maybe alert the author that someone has read their story?
    • (like the sketchbook project https://www.sketchbookproject.com/ - when someone takes your sketchbook out of the travelling library you get an email notification - it’s very satisfying!)
    • If we want to send emails in this way, we'll need to gather email addresses
    • Similar systems end up implementing a full user-management system
    • It might get spammy, would be better to get maybe a weekly digest or every so often
    • or some tracking on the page that the user could come and look at, a counter
    • Liam:
    • maybe at key intervals (like on international days) we do the reporting piece
    • and let folks know how others have engaged w their story
    • like monthy or a few times a year, it might be a nice surprise
    • but that moves away from value which may be derived from engaging with the people who have seen your story (if the interval is long)
  • Instead of feeling that your story has gone off into the void, some feedback
  • Social media share tracker implementations?
  • A basic "like" button?
  • Various mechanisms to show that to the author
  • James: he's seen something called U-Report from UNICEF
  • It has a dashboard where young people can track users and other things they can quantify into usable data, which they can use to engage with local or community leaders on a particular issue.
  • We're talking about an encounter with a local leader or a company official, what have you, so we have an exchange

Integration with other Platforms

  • Can our tool be connected to another platform where different stakeholders can understand and engage and interact with young people?
    • These systems can feed into each other, the stakeholders in the community we're trying to reach can engage with the young people
    • how can we make tools user-friendly to different groups?
  • Integration with other systems: if we build an integration point, we can get a force of magnification by being able to connect to so many other things
  • James: http://www.ureport.ug/
  • This site is used in Uganda, Rwanda and ___
  • It's meant to tap into adolescents and get their perspectives
  • Another platform that exists is called Follow The Money
    • It's meant to hold people accountable
    • It's a monitoring device so the public can keep track of resource distribution
    • https://www.ushahidi.com/
    • http://followthemoneyng.org/
    • Use this data to do evidence-based advocacy
    • It raises consciousness of people to be able to fight corruption and make sure they receive services at the lowest point in the community and have a good standard of living
    • We're trying to map out a youth organization, how to we bring on board the voices of young people with learning differences
    • There's no easy walk to freedom, sometimes to you have to fight for it

    • social rights (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic,_social_and_cultural_rights)

    • Social rights tend to be a tradeoff for participation
    • We want to inspire and support young people with learning differences, but also use their voices for advocacy and monitor that
  • Many young people have mobile phones, how can they use an SMS system to share their story?
  • Maybe send a code and it sends to an online system and the story is shared, just by sending an SMS, regardless of the number of words.
  • It's a user at the margins, this is what we want, we can bring out their voices
  • Alan: in parts of Africa, they don't have internet coverage but do have reliable SMS access or similar telecom
  • James: this is one of the reasons, but also few young people are trained in the use of computers
  • Many young people are on facebook, etc, but it's about training them to use this other option, another platform to raise their voices as an advocacy tool
  • They use facebook as a social tool, but we want to make a facebook for empowerment
  • Alan: (how) can we educate young people in the use of this platform?
    • Complications arise when people are using big corporate-owned websites
  • James: Some of these companies are interested in supporting small community initiatives
    • 60% of the African population is young people
    • How do you get a group of young people passionate about Social Justice issues

Wrapping Up

  • It's almost 2:00 and we haven't covered any of the things we meant to :)
    • Liam: #betterthanexpected
    • Topic that was more interesting than the agenda, we throw out the agenda
    • Applying some of the ground rules for unconferencing
  • Alan: are there any questions about the travel arrangements for DEEP?
    • James may ask us to book the ticket for him since he just cleared his tuition and expects his next payment kind of last-minute

Actions:

  • James will send an email to Alan about booking flight and he'll loop Iris into the discussion
  • Dana: we owe Liam that MOU stuff so we'll get that
  • We'll book another time to talk more about a new design crit some time in the near future, at least a week ahead
    • We'll send an email to the list which will let people join
    • We can show the latest demo at that point as well