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Caravan Project and EFL working with Roma adolescents

Caravan Project in collaboration with French Excellence laboratory “Empirical Foundations of Linguistics” (EFL) working together in a collaborative project with a group of Roma adolescents.

The goal of this project is to empower Roma adolescents and give them the chance to articulate their own voice through participatory digital storytelling. Our motivation is to show that Roma adolescents, given the right incentives, are able to reflect the richness of their culture, to produce films, to be the storytellers of their own stories.

At the first stage of this workshop a team of facilitators will work with a group of 12 Roma adolescents (aged 14-18) and engage them with community based technique word cafe in order to identify and address the two stories/ topics that feel essential for their community. Later on, through an intensive workshop we will try to familiarize the children with various forms of storytelling techniques. The adolescents through participatory video techniques will have the chance to use the camera and the sound recorder, to conduct research and interview, to document, map, edit, and disseminate their stories on topics of their choice and to employ different filmmaking techniques that will serve their goals. Later on the adolescents will be divided into two teams and with the assistance of the facilitators they will start the filming process. The spoken language of the films will be in Romani. At the last stage of this workshop, the editing process will take place, in order to realize and produce two short documentary films. The workshop in total will last for seven days. Our role as an external agent is to catalyse, facilitate or «accompany» the community in acquiring power. In other words, to gain control over the factors and decisions that shape their lives and gain community ownership.