On March 31, 2017, in Ouagadougou, Equipop attended a press conference organized by AIDOS to present their training program video training course "Filming Bridges" as part of the "Building Bridges" project, in which Equipop is an implementing partner. This project aims to promote dialogue between young people in Africa and Europe to enable them to develop common strategies and tools to promote the abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Several members of the Alliance Droits et Santé network were there!
Videos to raise awareness about FGM and break the weight of tradition
At the opening of the press conference, the UNFPA Permanent Representative in Burkina Faso and the representative of the Permanent Secretariat of the National Committee to Combat Female Genital Mutilation emphasized that the main issues allowing the practice of female genital mutilation to persist are linked to the weight of tradition.
In Burkina Faso, although progress has been made in terms of legislation, it is very difficult to obtain reports via the toll-free number provided. The practice is therefore becoming more dangerous, with girls being circumcised at an increasingly young age, and sometimes in secret. This is particularly true along the border with Mali, where the practice is becoming cross-border. As part of the "2016-2020 national strategy for the elimination of FGM," the secretariat has emphasized the crucial importance of further developing legal assistance, medical and psychosocial care for the consequences of FGM, and prevention through communication as a tool for social transformation.
It is with this in mind that "Filming Bridges" was launched, asthe videos produced will reflect the volunteers' mutual learning experience, their commitment to ending FGM, and their suggestions and ideas for facilitating its disappearance, with a view to building bridges between Europe and Africa.
Malian members of Alliance Droits et Santé strengthen their video production skills
Fifteen young people from seven African countries (Mali, Guinea Conakry, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania, Cameroon) living in Africa or Europe (France, Bulgaria, United Kingdom) participated in this workshop which took place from March 22 to 30, 2017, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. These young people work for civil society organizations (CSOs) and as journalists.
AJCAD andAMSOPT, two Malian organizations that are members ofAlliance Droits et Santé and partners of Equipop, participated in this training. The program included sharing personal experiences with MSF practices and/or expertise in video production, filming, and editing, both during the training workshop and after returning home. The ultimate goal was to enable them to develop their filmmaking and screenwriting skills in the long term, so that in the future, everyone will be able to create awareness-raising tools on their own scale.
Powerful films that tell the story of MSF here and abroad
The press conference provided an opportunity to screen the short film made by the participants during the ten-day training course. The partner organizations present were impressed by the quality of the film, despite the limited time available to the participants to make it.
Three screenplay projects have also been selected to be supported and produced by UNFPA and UNICEF, partners in the project, in the coming months. The script written by the representative of AMSOPT, in partnership with a Guinean woman living in the United Kingdom and a Cameroonian man living in Bulgaria, was among the winners and could therefore very soon be turned into a short film for wider distribution.
To be continued!
