Rising Voices

We have some updates from REPACTED Kenya, a community group in Nakuru led by the dynamic duo Collins Odu Oduor and Dennis Kimambo. It uses participatory magnet theater and ICT to make behavioral changes among youths and teach them about AIDS and social issues.

In the last week of July REPACTED had a workshop on report writing and blogging in their project office in Nakuru, Kenya. From their project blog in Rising Voices:

After a long search finally REPACTED has found the right person to train the community on how to video blog, also the trained members have been bringing feed back and are compiling a magazine to be distributed to the community while each of them will have there own blog, they have been shy on blogging wondering where they will get content but after reading blogs from other people they are becoming more and more confident in there respective areas of specialty by the end of this month we will have different bloggers joining the forum.

Eighteen participants attended and they were prepared for the blogging lessons. Dennis informed that next week they will be having another workshop.

Here are some of the pictures of their magnet theater activities:

Image Credit: Dennis Kimambo

Here is a video of Collins Oduor speaking on REPACTED at the Global Voices Summit in Budapest:

REPACTED was also awarded the MTV and The Body Shop Staying Alive winner in June 2008.

Denis Kimambo attended the recently concluded Mexico 2008 AIDS conference. He was amazed by the use of citizen media tools by the youth delegates:

“What’s more noticeable to me then the official visitors - is how many youth delegates here have cellphones, cameras, computers, etc, and are constantly creating media. Each session flashes are going off and people are capturing video on their cellphones.”

We hope the youths in Nakuru will be able to use citizen media tools soon to tell their stories. We are looking forward to reading their blogs and learn more about the youths of Nakuru.