Universiti Malaya Community Engagement Centre (UMCares)
My Voice, My Story: Digital Storytelling for Community Empowerment
There seems to be a disjuncture between the community’s needs and the authority’s delivery with regards to Orang Asli education. What type of learning environment would inspire and serve the needs of the Orang Asli? How do we better design education delivery and curriculum for the Orang Asli community? This project utilizes the medium of digital storytelling to provide an avenue for the Orang Asli children and youth to voice their experiences, needs and aspirations with regards to their schooling experience. What are their experiences going to school? What are their dreams and hopes? What are the challenges they face? The storytelling process is designed to empower the students in voicing their opinions and needs and allow for their voices to be heard. Through a series of workshops and participatory exercises, the project trained 13 youth to produce digital stories of their experiences. The youth gained confidence and sense of empowerment in having their voices heard. The digital stories were screened for community members and also uploaded on a website. The stories will be further used for public screenings and education purposes.
We were introduced to Kg Pawong by a friend who has been working there in providing tuition classes for the youth during school holidays. We met with the village leader and introduced the project. It helped that we have videos from the previous year’s project to show. The village head expressed interest in having the youth in his village participate. We then met with the youth and explained the project to them and consulted on their interest. We went back to the village twice more after that to maintain touch and to plan dates suitable for the youth. The youth provided input on the dates and also helped organize the participants.
We conducted a screening at the village which was presented by the youth themselves. They introduced the project and activities to the community. We included a video that summarizes their digital camp experience. The youth then presented their digital stories. The screening was attended by 50 parents and family members. The youth and parents were interviewed after the screening for their feedback.
Stakeholders Engagement
The villagers were consulted at all phases of the project. They determined the participants and time for the workshop. Our key contacts initially were the Tok Batin and head of JKKK. Later we communicated directly with the youth via whatsapp after the workshop and kept in touch and updated on their development.
Future Enhancement
After analysing the digital stories we saw that there were two prevalent issues facing the youth. The first is bullying and the second is not having proper career guidance or access to information regarding education or career options. From this assessment, we propose two related projects –the first is an anti-bullying workshop and the second is a career guidance/mentorship programme for the youth. Both these activities can be replicated for many other communities in the future. We also found the public screenings received good feedback. We plan to continue having screenings but with targeted audiences such as educators and policy makers.
Last Update: 18/04/2022
