I spent two weeks in South Africa working with students as a volunteer for Bridges to Understanding, a program that has taught digital storytelling workshops both in the US and in international locations. Through Bridges, volunteers go to India, Peru, Guatemala and South Africa to support local students in telling their own stories through brief movies made from still images. The students choose the themes and topics for the digital stories, and Bridges then posts completed stories on their website. [A gallery of recent stories on such topics as Single Mothers, the Spirit of Music, and Young Working Girls is available at www.bridgesweb.org [1] ]. I happen to be a teacher, but Bridges has accepted interested volunteers from any background. In my case, while I have a longstanding interest in Africa, I went on the trip with no particular expertise or training with either photography or digital storytelling.

( NOTE: As of 2009, however,  Bridges is restructuring their programs, possibly shifting their model to a student-to-student exchange, so they might not need any adult volunteers in the future. Check out their Web site for more current information. )

In late July, I met up with the eleven other Bridges volunteers at a comfortable and welcoming guest house in Stellenbosch, a university town in the wine country about 45 minutes northeast of central Cape Town. Bridges staff was there to orient us to the area and prepare us for our project. Our job was to mentor a group of 20 students from the Hector Peterson Secondary School, located in the informal settlement (or “township”) of Wallacedene outside of Cape Town. Of Wallacedene’s 70,000 residents, only 10% or so live in permanent housing, mostly 3-room, government-built cement houses. Hector Peterson is the township’s only high school. The entire community lives in severe poverty, and the school is both over-crowded and under-resourced. It is hard to fathom how the students and teachers persevere in these conditions – and yet some surprisingly intense teaching and learning definitely goes on there. I was quite struck by the spirit and determination of the students.

The students, which they call “learners,” were quite welcoming and outgoing. They were also energetic and focused when it came to the project. Our group of volunteers would have training sessions each morning at the guest house, and then we would take a short bus ride to the school to collaborate with the students each afternoon. In our morning sessions, we were taught some basic principles of photography and of storytelling. We were also shown how to edit digital pictures in PhotoShop as well as how to make basic movies in Premiere. In the afternoons, we joined the students at the school. We broke into our two project teams and worked together to divide up the necessary tasks: picture taking, script writing, sound recording, etc. We taught the students as much of what we were learning as we had time for, and we were also responsible for keeping the project moving toward completion on our limited timeline. Our goal was to guide the group’s work while letting their voices and stories emerge.

The students were very eager to use the projects as a medium to share both the challenges and the joys of their lives. Their commitment made it easy to get the work done, even when it took long hours. Most of our evening time was spent processing the day’s work, especially sorting and editing pictures and then producing storyboard and slide show drafts to present to them the next day. We did have a couple of organized excursions with the students, including a dinner event and a ferry trip to Robben Island. To take advantage of being in South Africa, many of the workshop participants traveled independently either before or after the program.

The Bridges workshop created two digital stories, on the topics “Rising Food Prices” and “Environmental Hazards in the Community.” The students generated most of the images and narration for the stories, and they had some pretty mature insights about the circumstances of their lives. They were realistic, but also hopeful. While the visit was short, I will be looking for ways to continue my involvement with Bridges and with the students I met. While the differences between my daily life here in the US and that of the South African students were especially striking, what I remember the most vividly are the individuals I met, the students and the teachers. I think it is my experiences working side by side with them that will end up having the most impact on me.