Citizen Journalism Workshop Cape Town - What lovely participants!

Lebo and I were facilitating the citizen journalism workshop this week in Cape Town. The venue for the workshop was the Saartjie Baartman Centre in Manenburg. Although the venue was slightly far from the CBD, we chose it because of the many different female organisations that are based there. Sadly, none of the organisations based there were part of our training but it was still nice interacting with them.

The workshop was the last (for now) of the national citizen journalism workshops that Women'sNet was providing. The aim of the workshop was to show and train the participants how to use tools they have at their disposal to become citizen journalists. With this knowledge, they would then go back to their organisations and train the communities they work with.

The training participants came from the following organisations: Southern African Media and Gender Institute (SAMGI), Mitchelles Plein Trauma Centre, Triangle Project, New Women's Movement, Disabled People of South Africa (DPSA) and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).

This was one of the most "quick to learn" group I have ever seen in a workshop and they all took interest in all (and I mean all) activities given to them. At the end of each day, each of them would be complete with the task given them.

On Wednesday, there was a taxi strike in Cape Town. Lebo and I were worried because we knew the situation was going to affect some of the participants. However, we were really impressed to see that the participants that use public transport still managed to make it to the workshop. There was only one who could not make it but he also made an effort to call and say he can't make it.

The workshop ended yesterday and participants each took home a dvd of the digital stories they made on day 3 of the workshop. The final products are really beautiful. It's just unfortunate that I was not present in room for the final viewing (not feeling well).

Thanks to the following for people that gave Lebo and I support:

- Tebogo and Caroline from Gender Dynamics

- Marion Stevens from the Health System Trust

- Peter Benjamin from Cell Life for the presentation

To all the participants, thank you very much - you were all fantastic!!!!!