Caritas and the University of Notre Dame Australia combined forces and harnessed technology to assist Fijian youth in a surprising way
By Anthony Barich
Fiji, located in a seismic zone and prone to flash flooding and cyclones from November to April, is no stranger to natural disasters.
Its government has a Permanent Secretary for Natural Disaster. In February last year, its Prime Minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, declared a 30-day state of natural disaster in areas affected by Cyclone Gene, which gave officials authority to forcibly remove victims for their safety.
Caritas Australia and the University of Notre Dame Australia have stepped in to teach Fiji’s youth how to save their country from natural disasters.
Caritas commissioned UNDA communications lecturer John Reed to create a video to teach Fijian youth how to survive natural disasters, in the hope they would then spread the message to their parents – but he went one better. Taking a Scitech animation specialist, eight Mac Book Pros from UNDA, web-cameras and a full-HD video camera with him, he set up a portable computer lab to educate Fijian youth in the old whaling town of Levuka, the old capital on Ovalau Island in Central Fiji from July 1-10.
Fijian students from St John’s College and Loreto Primary School created storyboards and brought them to life by shooting them on web-cameras on a miniature set with props photographed frame by frame before a static background, which they also created.
The Loreto students had the roof of their school and student accommodation ripped off during a cyclone last year, so had personal experience to draw on.
It was all done under the direction of Reed and Mark Sadler, manager of Scitech’s Digital Studio and director of the Animation Film Festival that showcases the efforts WA students form Years 4-12 who produce stop-motion, Flash or 3D animation films.
Now computer giant Apple is interested in featuring the Caritas Fiji Disaster Management Animation project as a case study on its website, and it was displayed at Caritas’ Blueprint for a Better World Exhibition at UNDA until July 20.
The videos will also be translated into the region’s indigenous languages, distributed through the school network and shown on Fijian television to educate the public, and is also planned to be distributed throughout the Pacific – to Samoa, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, where Caritas’ Disaster Risk Reduction Program operates.
“I suggested that the best way for kids to retain information is if they are involved in the production process and recommended we take Mark Sadler from Scitech to run animation workshops with ND Macbook Pro computers; Caritas contacted Scitech and they agreed,” Reed said.
He said the project pioneers the model of teaching youth how to handle a disaster, “not knocking them over the head, but teaching them to make cartoons with important content. It’s like educating them by pretending not to”.
Caritas’ guidelines on how to survive natural disasters, including tsunami, cyclone, flood, fire and earthquake, were built into the stories of the cartoons and were based on information from Fiji’s National Disaster Management Office.
“Brochures don’t tend to have much of an effect as people don’t read them; but when we showed the finished product of the animation to a local Fijian village, the community was completely glued the screen. It seems everyone loves animation,” said Caritas Pacific programs coordinator Kirsty Robertson, who joined the project.