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ShelterBox’s communications, development and operations teams have joined forces in the Philippines to carry out the disaster relief charity’s first monitoring and evaluation participatory video project with Typhoon Haiyan survivors.
Audiovisual officer John Jones and monitoring and evaluation coordinator Dr. Alison Ashlin are spending ten days on Bantayan island training a group of ShelterBox beneficiaries in basic filmmaking. They are using activities to encourage discussion about their recovery since Haiyan hit last November.
‘It is important that we run evaluation projects like this as without them we can never learn,’ said John Jones. ‘By having the confidence to ask our beneficiaries about the work we have done and how we can help even more in the future, we can change the way we work for the better, grow as an organisation, and ultimately strive to be as effective as we can with every penny of our donors' money.'
Encourage honest stories
The 11 participants will develop content for video, which they will then go on to film and edit. By giving them complete ownership over the project, and by spending the days building up trust with them, ShelterBox hopes to encourage honest stories of their experiences living in ShelterBox tents, and providing them with a tool in which they can deliver this feedback. This will help ShelterBox continue to improve its emergency response and evolve for the better.
‘We have just finished the first day of the workshop and we have come away feeling really proud of our participants!’ continued John. ‘They have no video experience at all but their first films are looking great. They seem really engaged and despite this whole workshop being a bit of a strange concept for them they have gone away really excited and looking forward to tomorrow.
‘On the short drive from the port to our accommodation I saw for the first time in context ShelterBox tents being lived in by families. It was a stark reminder of what all the work and effort of our volunteers, and support of our donors, actually means for families that need shelter.
Beneficiary insight invaluable
‘It is exciting for me to have the opportunity to now go even further than this and begin to meet and work with the family members that received our aid. Their insight is going to be invaluable and an important contribution to the success of ShelterBox’s work in the future.’
ShelterBox is still aiding Filipino families whose lives and livelihoods were shattered on 8 November 2013 by turning its attention to providing other types of aid that are more suited to the current need and working with partner aid agencies. Read more here.
