Welcome to Creative’s blog! While this is a work in progress and is only in the testing stage, we hope you’ll be inspired with this new Communications initiative to jot your ideas, opinions and daily experiences tackling international development issues. With your participation, Creative Post It(S) will be dynamic and generate discussions, questions, that may helpful to your daily activities. Thanks.
This photo really captures the essence of my experience of documenting success stories for The Albanian Initiative: Coordinated Action Against Human Trafficking (CAAHT) program. It was a fully immersive experience and often times, as in the brief moment conveyed in this photo, I felt the impetus to leave my designated position from behind the camera lens and join the community.
On this particular visit, we were warmly received by the Roman community in Balatez, Fier, where 3 beneficiaries had been assisted by the Murialdo Social Center, a CAAHT grantee. All 3 are talented musicians and were given the opportunity to improve on their skills through vocational training courses in music. They are now often booked to play weddings and other gigs in nearby towns and villages. To demonstrate their appreciation, they put together a full hour (plus) performance of uninterrupted music and dance for us and their community. I could not help but join and learn some new moves! It wasn’t hard for me to blend in as a Bulgarian: I was assured once more of the similarity among all Balkan musical forms and rhythms. I felt an overwhelming solidarity too in holding hands with the youths in the circle dance. I knew too well that their lives are not easy and these shared moments of celebration are the true testament to their resilience and transformative spirit!
The other day I interviewed Rumu Sarkar about her “New Soldier” concept. One premise is that the “New Soldier” provides a solution to the shift from traditional warfare to the guerrilla tactics that have characterized conflicts since Vietnam. According to Sarkar, the “New Soldier” is highly empathetic, is culturally aware and linguistically functional so as to help win over hearts and minds (of the enemy). This “New Soldier” also helps to rebuild infrastructure and spur economic development. If this is so, what function will be left for development professionals in the field?
I had the opportunity to vote in the recent Salvadorean elections, in January and the most recent on March 15th. It was a nice feeling, as it was the first time I remember voting without any bullets flying over me and without being afraid to do so. I have been living in Washington DC for almost 15 years now, but I still had the moral obligation to travel south and perform my civic duty. On both of my trips, I had the opportunity to understand the importance of my vote and also had the chance to share moments with hundreds of fellow citizens…it was nice to be part of a civic party. Although I will not mentioned if I am happy or sad by the outcome of these elections, I thought I just post this not only to show how important it was for me to go to the polls that were 7,847 miles away, but also because this is my first post in this Blog site I am creating.
Marta S. Maldonado
The documentary/film “War Dance” depicts children of the Acholis tribe in a Northern Ugandan IDP camp (Patongo Refugee Camp). The children are orphans some of whom have been soldiers in the Lord’s Resistance Army. Since Creative’s UNITY project works with IDP children in Uganda’s North, I thought this film might be of some interest to staff.
“War Dance” is a devastatingly emotional saga about Ugandan children of war reclaiming their lives and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of art to transform lives. The film also gives individual faces to sorrow and to hope.
The numbers are appalling: 200,000 children without parents, 30,000 abducted into the LRA, 90 percent of all Acholis forced to relocate from family farms to camps. The filmmakers focus on three kids in Patongo: Nancy, 14, Rose, 13, and Dominic, 14.
War Dance” covers the run-up to the 2005 National Music Competition in Kampala, and the preparations at the camp’s primary school. The children’s immersion in music and dance is deeply moving. Art is all that connects them to their people, to each other, and to life. Nancy is part of the Traditional Dance troupe, performing her tribe’s 500-year-old bwola dance, while Rose sings in the Western Choral competition. Dominic is a gifted xylophone player who totes his handcrafted instrument everywhere and who dreams of his name being known throughout Uganda.
The expressions on the faces of the Patongo kids as they perform in Kampala; their joy so hard-won is almost too profound to contemplate. As the team approaches the final day of competition, Dominic says, “We are going to show them we are giants.”
USAID Blog Feeds