In an effort to inspire another kind of storytelling, the Sonke Gender Justice, the International Organization for Migration and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa collaborated with the Center for Digital Storytelling’s Silence Speaks project in 2007 to conduct a series of participatory media production workshops. Women and men from around Southern Africa came together and shared their stories verbally in a carefully facilitated group process; wrote and recorded short scripts; collected still photos and video clips; and were guided through hands-on computer tutorials. These activities gave them the skills they needed to create the digital stories presented here.

All participants were made aware in advance through an informed consent process that their stories would be developed for broad use in social change work. The workshops were structured in a way that took great care to balance emotional support for participants with focused production tasks. This is in keeping with the Silence Speaks methodology, which adapts principles from popular education, art therapy, trauma recovery and group process to ensure opportunities for personal and collective transformation.

Note: As the workshops were being planned, it became clear that few perpetrators of gender-based violence would be willing to share their stories publicly, due to the criminal nature of their actions and the shame and isolation they might face were they to come forward. But a number of men who grew up in households dominated by controlling and abusive fathers did participate. These men talk about the impact that witnessing violence by men had on their lives. In their stories, they explore what it means to be a different kind of man, one who is respectful, loving, and involved as a partner or father.

While the majority of the stories are told by South Africans, individuals from Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Swaziland are also represented. The themes that emerge from the collected stories thus cross national borders, and we believe the collection will be useful to those doing gender-based violence and HIV prevention work throughout sub-Saharan Africa and beyond.

Learn more about what you can do to get involved in sharing these stories.

View the stories.

acknowledgements

Special thanks to the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa and the International Organization for Migration for contributing additional stories to this compilation.

Thanks to the following funders for supporting the digital storytelling project: John Lloyd Foundation; the Western Cape Department of Health; the South African Development Fund; the Ford Foundation; UNICEF; and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Portions of this work were also made possible by the UCLA Program in Global Health, through the support of the Ford Foundation and the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.

The views expressed in the stories are those of the storytellers and not those of the funders or any employees of the funders.