Canadian students sharing communication skills with CPAR Tanzania Staff

CPAR Tanzania takes a huge foot step towards communicating its work in Karatu and Bunda to the rest of the world

Communicating our work with people requires willingness, motivation and skills on how to present stories, photos, videos and to explicitly show how, through CPAR's support, rural communities come forward to prioritize their needs in order to achieve a better quality of life.

CPAR Tanzania offices are based in program areas of rural Karatu and Bunda Districts, the advantage of this is that CPAR Tanzania has enjoyed, and is still enjoying, a close relationship with the communities it works with. This has resulted in the "fairly smooth" implementation of its programs. On the other hand, being away from the city, poses obstacles towards career development, particularly when you look at the pace of technology change in the communications field.

 In order to overcome this challenge, CPAR Toronto in collaboration with the University of Manitoba (through World W.I.S.E. at the International Center for Students) selected four students to participate in a Service Learning Program, which included, among other programs, communication training for CPAR Tz staff.

The selected students were Scott Jarosiewicz, Mallory Giardino, Jacklynn Stott, and Katherine Davis who each spent six weeks with CPAR staff "rotating" their skills, taking quality photos, using flip video, manipulating photos, editing videos, and creating and maintaining blogs. Presentation skills, and how to enhance our communication with the public, was part of the training as well.

"This really is an interesting program, we've always been taking photos and videos but didn't know what to do afterwards. With this program it means that we can diligently send stories from a Tanzanian perspective, express our opinions about development work, and communicate directly with Canadian public through our blog. It's just perfect" says Nderingo, CPAR Tz field staff.

"This training has improved our skills. With quality videos and photos, we can definitely make less work for headquarters in editing photos and videos" says Deo, CPAR Tz field staff.

"Much as the program takes a lot of logistical effort, it is worth it" says Japhet, the CPAR Tz Country Manager, " it is a factual, eye-opening experience, that will help us to better communicating with the rest of the world and tell it about our work."

Doing good work is a good thing, but communicating to people about the good work is the best way to get each of us involved.