MEV-CAM announces new Toolkit on Participatory Video
The "Making Every Voice Count for Adaptive Management" (MEV-CAM) Initiative was created in 2020 and alters the way South-South knowledge management is approached by using local and indigenous knowledge to restore degraded drylands with more sustainable practices. By empowering communities and stakeholders to demonstrate their skills, express their challenges, and share successes, the most significant impacts of development projects can be visualized from the process of change itself.
MEV-CAM has been present in Tanzania since 2020, where participants learned the basics of participatory video and how to use this tool to capture community voices from the ground. In 2022, Tanzania participated in another training series on advanced facilitation ofparticipatory video,where this time participants represented both the DSL-IP and Resilient Food Systems (RFS) landscapes to extract good practices that can be transferred and scaled up. Participants from both programs gained expertise in collaborating with community members and using participatory video as a visual means to assess the overall impact of project interventions. This capacity building training focused on applying participatory exercises with communities and the importance of equipping them with a suitable space to share their narratives and depict the current situation on the ground from their perspective. Trainees and community members alike learned how to identify the most significant change observedfromthe project's impact and learned how to use participatory video to advocate for positive changes. As a result of this year-long endeavor, members of the Hadzabe community in Munguli village, located in the Mkalama District of Tanzania's Singida region, produced a participatory video that highlights the advantages of beekeeping.
The Hadzabe community emphasized the importance of showcasing traditional honey harvesting methods, exemplified by Isaack Abel, a community member who extracted honey barehanded and without protective gear. In response, the RFS project empowered the Munguli village with a land use and participatory plan, enabling the community to invest in their forest independently. This initiative, a part of the Reversing Land Degradation Trend and Increasing Food Security in Degraded Ecosystems of Semi-arid Areas of Central Tanzania (LDFS) project, provided the community with 600 beehives, yielding significant impacts. Consequently, the Hadzabe community adopted modern beehives, protective gear, and established their own honey markets, leading to profits that funded infrastructure development, including bathrooms and classrooms. Challenges, such as market sustainability and livestock policies, persist. DSL-IP recognized these issues and is working to enhance sustainable honey production as part of the 10-year sustainability plan.
The MEV-CAM initiative will continue to work with the Project Management Unit, partners, stakeholders, and communitiesto develop capacity building skills and mentor the colleagues as they monitor the change that develops as new practices are adopted. Good practices will continue to be collected, documented, and shared in MEV-CAM's new Knowledge Bank for easy replicability and regional exchanges.
MEV-CAM announced its toolkit in Participatory Videoduring the Twenty-First session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC 21) on 16 November in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, which contains case studies from Tanzania's on the ground experience. It is set to be published in early December - Stay tuned for more information!
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News: FAO's participatory video toolkit: empowering communities with visual storytelling
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