Simon Koolwijk

"Seeing our group of HIV/Aids-infected people for 5 minutes on video as long as our Mayor on video, gave us the feeling that we are recognized and seen in our community.”  A women’s leader in a community in Ethiopia expressed this feeling at a community dialogue, where self-developed video stories were shared amongst stakeholders in Ethiopia, when they discussed about the changes, that had taken place in the health sector.  “Seeing ourselves on video, shows how our behavior and attitude has changed in a positive way on how we deal with challenges in the health sector. It strengthens our commitment to continue this process of dialogue amongst the service providers and service users” This story is an example on how video storytelling can make a difference in participatory processes. Video storytelling is a method, where people who have a common topic of interest,   work together to develop a film. The participants are the directors of the film. The purpose is to...

‘Citizens are not afraid anymore to demand for their entitlements! Health service providers do listen better to the demands of their patients. The quality of the health care has significantly improved last year. The treatments have improved, people started to talk positively about the service in the clinic, service providers keep their time schedules, the ambulance service is 24 hours available, hygiene practices have improved and the clinic is clean.’ This is one of the change stories, which was shared by citizens, service providers and government officials who participated in a participatory video intervention facilitated by Redeem The Generation (RTG), a local civil society organization who supports social accountability processes in various municipalities in Ethiopia.  For the whole story consult video:   Behavioral change and service improvements on health care in Matehare, Ethiopia . Social Accountability Social Accountability is a process where cit...

As part of its communication, monitoring and evaluation strategy, the Ethiopian Social Accountability Program Phase 2, organised a participatory video, a most significant change story and social accountability committee hero competition. In each category around 25 organisations each participated. The final award ceremony took place on the 4th November, 2015 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The event gave a platform for the actual social accountability implementers to be awarded. The event was attended by more than 250 participants and representatives from national and international media. Watch the video;  

This video shows on how stories are visualized through participatory video stories in one week. From story board development to filming, to editing and then finally presenting and discussing the videos at a community dialogue meeting participants from social accountability partners learn to apply participatory video for dialogue with the community in discussing the progress on educational service delivery in Shashemene, Ethiopia. The training took place from 23 – 27 March, 2015 in Hawassa and Shashemene, Ethiopia. The participants inteviewed and involved 6 stakeholder groups in the discussion on the progress of educational services in Shashemene, Ethiopia. Both user groups, students, and service providers, teachers were involved in this participatory process. As experiment, also control groups from both students and teachers were involved in the PV process. The control groups came from schools, who did not participate in the social accountability process. The training was implemen...

From 18th – 20th March, 2015 twenty participatory video facilitators and practitioners attended a three day advanced training in participatory video. The twenty pv facilitators are representing 10 social accountability implementing partners (SAIPs), that are involved in implementing social accountability processes in the sectors of health, education, agriculture, water & sanitation and rural roads in the whole country of Ethiopia. The pv facilitators conducted pv interventions between October 2014 and February, 2015. This training gave them the opportunity to share their experiences and update their knowledge on participatory video, to learn to work with advanced software in video editing and to learn how to use the participatory videos for monitoring and evaluation and to discuss the opportunities and challenges on how to sustain participatory video in their organisation. Between May and July 2015, these SAIPs will continue to implement new participatory video interventions and ...

On the 29th August, 2014 the Ethiopian Social Accountability Program Phase 2 (ESAP2) organized the Participatory Video Oscar Reward ceremony in Addis Ababa. Fifteen organisations had submitted each 5 videos for participatory video interventions, they had conducted between March and July, 2014. Five organizations, who were nominated, had to compete prior to the PV Oscar Reward ceremony. Finally the winner was selected and rewarded in the Washington Hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In this video some of the participatory video facilitators and a community member comment on how PV impacted and influenced their work. The PV Oscar competition brought some surprising result for them.Watch:

The training participatory video, applied in the Ethiopian Social Accountability Program , consists of 7 steps on how participants from social accountability partners learn to apply participatory video for dialogue with the community. The third training took place from 1 - 5 September, 2014 in Hawassa, Ethiopia. The participants inteviewed and involved 7 stakeholder groups in the discussion on the improvement of health care in Meki, Ethiopia. Both user groups and service providers were involved in this participatory process. The training was implemented by a team of participatory video trainers coming from Ethiopia and The Netherlands. Between October and December, 2014 the participants will apply the participatory video in their own workplace and social accountability projects involving their communties. The participatory video training and program is part of the Ethiopian Social Accountability Program Phase 2 .  Watch the video: