18 months of Community video unit team in PJI

Pravah Jaipur initiative is a youth development organization that facilitates the leadership journey of young people through experiential learning.
The nature of work inspired Pravah to take up Community Video as one of its programme and Aaina TV came into the existence in 2009.

Aaina TV: Through this unit Pravah Jaipur Initiative (PJI) is trying to bridge the gap between the youth from the marginalized section of the society and the urban youth.

Through this CVU Pravah, Jaipur has trained local community members in community video production. The Community Video Unit (CVU) comprises of 6 community members who are trained as full-time Community Video Producers. They are between the age of 18 to 30.They have produced 4 "video Magazines" on different social issues like road safety, water and active citizenship. The team robustly feels that video is a tool for them to expand scale and reach, promote awareness and information, and to enable communities to advocate and negotiate with relevant authorities.

Brief about producers

1.Seema Gupta – After joining the CVU team and working as a producer, she can feel the change in herself. She feels that now she has started thinking, developing her own point of view. As she herself said “Most importantly, I have started working for others also, which provides me great satisfaction.” She wishes to create another CVU in her community and train youth in community video.

2.Meenu Pareek After being ill-treated in her own house she finds strength in her work at the CVU. She wants to continue making films on issues to become a change maker in her community.

3.Abhishek Chanwaria studying in class 12^th and making films on social issues gives him immense confidence. Once a shy guy, he express himself very confidently now. He is always ready to learn new software - whether it’s from his trainer or a volunteer visiting Pravah. He loves that after he joined the CVU, his community sees him in a new light – takes him more seriously.

4.Mohammad Khalil: He used cut and polish gemstones before. But he loves being part of the CVU and feels lucky to have learnt filmmaking. He wants to change the future of his community through the lens of camera.

5.Rahul Sharma: Technically the sharpest of the group. He wants to become a filmmaker himself.

6.Rajesh Kumar: Once an extremely shy person, Rajesh has grown as an individual during his stints at the CVU. He is part of every screening and takes the initiative in conducting post screening discussions. He wants to continue to work as a film maker and want to make documentaries on issues related to marginalized communities.

Assessment:

The community producers at Aaina T.V. are a young and energetic group. They have lived in Jaipur and thus were exposed to the medium even before they joined Aaina T.V. Thus they are technically quite strong and have understood the medium well.

Pravah Jaipur Initiative was at a nascent stage when the CVU was formed. The producers were selected from the community based on their interest. But from the very beginning all the producers participated in all the other programmes in Pravah. This gave them a strong base to overcome their inhibitions as well as an opportunity to learn new things apart from their regular training. In the last eighteen months they have learnt to make radio spots, mime, theatre and thus Pravah also feels that CVU is a useful tool for their overall communication activities.

Innovation by the group

For increased community mobilization Aaina T.V. would make small radio spots on social issues like RTI, active citizenship etc. and would then play it on the loud speakers. This not only attracted a large crowd but kept it interested as each time they would come up with a new idea/style for audio spot. They even use this opportunity to promote and discuss the theme/date of their films.

Impact: Aaina T.V was an integral part of Pravah and they participated in all of Pravah’s other programs wholeheartedly. Since Pravah was also at a nascent stage when CVU was formed, Aaina T.V. helped Pravah to set its roots in Jaipur. Four films were made by Aaina T.V. and their impacts were:

1. Ek Pehal badlav ki: A film on environment- on growing trees: kicked off a campaign on tree plantation in some areas. Not only did the residents participate in this campaign but one of them also volunteered to get tree guards for the planted trees and took responsibility of maintaining the plants.
2. Since Aaina T.V. actively participated in Pravah’s other programs, during one such meeting in the slum, women approached the producers and spoke about the issue of aggressive alcoholism in their areas and the devastation that it has caused. They urged Aaina T.V. members to make a film on it. Thus the community not only treated the CVU as their voice but actively participated in it.
3. After a film on water conservation “Jaldhara Jeevandhara” one of the community members – actually took the initiative and constructed a rain water harvesting structure in his house.

Challenges faced:

Pravah had a full time trainer and were happy with the skill level of their producers. The biggest challenge that Pravah faces now is the sustainability of these producers and the CVU. We spoke about producers taking up small documentation films, but with cut throat competition in Jaipur they seemed skeptical about it. It was also suggested that this team could be converted into a documentation unit of Pravah wherein they would document Pravah’s programmes as well as approach other NGOs to do their documentation.