Save the Children

GENERAL BACKGROUND

As part of Nanzikambe’s commitment to extend its development work sector, the organization has worked with a number of NGOs providing support and building capacity for various theatre practitioners. In September 2005, Save the Children-Umoyo Network contracted Nanzikambe to conduct a one –week in-house training for staff within the Umoyo Network and local NGOs. Nanzikambe’s assignment was to use its expertise in training twenty-one theatre practitioners from eleven of Savethchildren.org partner NGOs in interactive/participatory drama techniques. The training was designed to strengthen the participant’s skills in terms of message development, message delivery and audience participation, which are crucial for effective information dissemination and instigating community dialogue around HIV issues.

TRAINING OBJECTIVES

In relation to the needs expressed, the objectives of the training were:

• To build on existing skills and knowledge of what, how and why drama is used as behaviour change intervention;

• To introduce simple ways of developing correct, clear and relevant messages through the usage of basic social research methods necessary for the story/message development;

• To impart effective community mobilization techniques and communication skills that are based on audience-oriented active learning principles;

• To impart highly participatory theater methodologies that can be easily integrated into the existing drama work.

TRAINING METHODOLOGY

The training was designed in such a way that it took away the teaching and theoretical element and focused more on the practical and interactive perspective. With this approach, the participants went through a rigorous series of activities including role-play, brainstorming and discussions, laboratory sessions, games (energizers, icebreakers as well as specifically-designed games), songs etc. The participants were further drilled in research skills, story creation (improvisation, rehearsal and ‘participation-integration’ of the chosen storyline based on the research), community mobilization, and motivation, and performance.

FEEDBACK

As part of the assessment procedure, participants were required to prepare 10-minute presentations that would be shown to an invited audience as part of a ‘practicum’ performance. And the following are the general observations that emanated from the performances: -

• The performances were generally entertaining and motivating.

• The groups understood the importance of activating collective discussions and involving the target audience rather than having them passively sip on the information.

However, there were, of course, some notable impediments particularly in terms of clarity and focus. The main issues of some of the group’s presentations were simply blurred resulting in the piece’s main issue being confused with another. In this regard, there was no clear focus on one issue/theme as the groups shuffled through a multitude of issues.

From the evaluations, it was clear that though the participants had grasped some relevant interactive drama techniques, certain factors such as limited training time hindered the acquisition of certain equally important techniques. In this regard, the training was conclusively deemed to be ‘work in progress’ to be supplemented by a number of refresher courses in the near future.