This week Raul, Kelly and I visited Memo school in Bobonaro district, where I have been working with Year Six students to develop their communication skills as part of ChildFund Connect.
When we arrived, the students raced across the playground to give us a warm welcome. They’re always happy to see me because they know they will get to do some filming.
This day we focused on finishing their storyboards for their films, making sure they had a beginning, middle and end. They had some great film ideas, including an instructional video on how to make a Piao – a traditionally spinning top.
The children are really motivated by sharing their videos with their peers overseas. They feel proud to be able to show them what their life is like and also lucky to have this program in their school.
When I visit other districts and schools involved with ChildFund Timor-Leste, I get a lot of requests to extend ChildFund Connect. Teachers think the activities are interesting and beneficial for students. I can also see the benefits for the students’ future because they are learning new skills and developing their confidence in communicating their ideas.
If a program like this was around when I was growing up in Los Palos, I would be really happy and proud to learn new skills and capture the reality of my life at that time. Like some of the students I work with now, I might want to use the new skills to become a journalist.
We did some interviewing exercises on our second day of activities at the school. We asked the children to act as journalists investigating a case of a missing buffalo in their community. It was great to see their imaginations fly as they interviewed pretend community members and local authorities to unravel the mystery. Their class teacher, Marta Olivia, also got involved and encouraged the students to come up with interesting questions and answers.
On our last day, I interviewed Marta Olivia and also a student to get their thoughts on the activities. See what they had to say in our video below!
First published: ABC OPEN
Warruwi kids were very excited about the Our Day film project with ChildFund Connect, where we got to work with cameras to film bits of our daily lives. But what was really special was what we learned about the other kids and the connections we made.
Our students from Warruwi School, here on South Goulburn Island, are among 300 children from across the Asia-Pacific who have taken part in Our Day, a film project that documents a day in the life of children in different parts of the world.
Using pocket video cameras, our kids joined in with kids in Laos, Timor Leste and Vietnam to film moments in our day-to-day lives over a period of weeks.The footage we all took was then edited by Clinton J Isle into a short film that is a captivating journey through childhood in different countries.
The main idea of the project was to link children in Australia with children in developing countries and enable them to connect and learn with each other using video and other technologies to communicate.
So how excited were we to screen our film here on Warruwi!
With a BBQ beforehand, we had the screening in the office of the school where we set up our speakers and screen. Setting up for 60 people, we ran out of room and little kids were sitting on the floor. Parents, family,and friends of students who were involved were there. Before the film we screened outtakes not in the film and a project the boys in the class worked on earlier in the year on how to play a didgeridoo – which the little kids all across the school love when it is shown.
All through the film, people were laughing and little kids were asking questions about people from other places – some of the older ladies were trying to explain to the kids about how people in other countries don’t have water that comes from a tap, that they have to get it from outside. Some of my older students commented afterwards that they thought it was hard on the kids having to wash their clothes by hand. It was a really good learning experience for my students, listening to other people and the way they live.
Some of the really positive things the students said afterwards was how much they liked to listen to the other students make music, dance and speak in their own language. A big favourite was the footage of a girl doing gymnastics on a trampoline surface in Sydney. A lot of conversation has come out of this film!
At the end, families clapped and cheered – the younger students asking to see it again and the adults asking when it would be out on YouTube. Some of the adults, including teachers, were quite moved by the simplicity of the piece and how well our kids did and a couple of tears were wiped away at the end.
Afterwards, the students from Warruwi made a Skype call with the students from a Sydney school and through much laughter, face-pulling and shouted questions, the students managed to talk about what they liked, what they wanted to see more of, what it was like to live where they did – as well as several students from the Sydney school telling one of my students that he was “awesome” resulting in much laughter.
We hope that, through ChildFund Australia, for next year that we can continue a dialogue with the Sydney school and the school in East Timor. We are hoping to continue with the film-making with the cameras that have been given to the school by ChildFund and the hope is that some of these films can be used to help the students from these places to understand each other further.
A big positive of this film is the feel-good nature of the activities you see the kids involved in – laughing, having fun, getting out and enjoying themselves.
