Mobile Community Zimbabwe (MCZ) is a project that gives ambitious young Zimbabweans a voice and a platform to share and exchange information through mobile phones, video and social media. Using the StoryMaker app on Android-enabled smart phones, the MCZ project equips young Zimbabweans from across the country with skills to use their devices to tell compelling stories about themselves and their communities.
Starting in May 2013, Small World News assisted Free Press Unlimited in building the Mobile Community Zimbabwe project in order to enrich the restrictive Zimbabwean media environment. In a nation where the established media is under strict state control, new avenues of expression are bringing fresh stories to the surface. After leading nearly 50 Zimbabweans— young professionals, civil society workers, freelancers, bloggers, and budding media producers— through a week-long visual storytelling course, SWN mentored trainees for several months while they produced over 200 video reports published on the MCZ website and Youtube.
The videos were stories of local and international relevance. Trainees covered water shortages, youth unemployment, environmental problems, and municipal negligence unflinchingly, with Android smart phones as their only production tool. Local customs, dance, shopping trends, and scenes from daily life rarely highlighted by the traditional media were shown to the world and accessible internationally—a big step towards creating a new generation of media makers to tell the real story of Zimbabwe today.
© 2013 Small World News