CARE: Powerful Hands Working Together

Kenyan women speak out on perils of drought through photo storytelling

July 11, 2011, Kenya As the food security crisis worsens in Northern Kenya, CARE International is responding with support through humanitarian food and water aid, as well sanitation, mental health and education support. This is vital as the Kenya Food Security Outlook for the period of April to September of 2011 predicts that an estimated 2.4 million people in Kenya will be affected by lack of rainfall, coupled with water scarcity and depleted grazing ranges, putting them at risk of high levels of food insecurity. In addition to aid efforts, CARE is continuing its decade-long commitment in North Eastern Kenya to drought-affected communities in helping them build their resilience to increasing and more frequent drought. The Adaptation Learning Programme (ALP) in Africa is an example of a CARE initiative that focuses on helping people gain the skills needed for long-term food security in the face of a changing climate. The women in Nanighi community in North Eastern Kenya have something to say about drought, but their voices are usually not heard due to cultural norms that shy them away from media. This is an area that is home to historic pastoralist communities of Somali origins who have traditionally kept to themselves, and yet are increasingly dependent upon outsiders as they are having to shift to farming activities or move to urban centres for survival. When the women meet, however, their voices rise. They talk about children being hungry in their village, of cows dying before they make it to markets, and how they are now having to leave their households to find new ways to make money.
Maka Barrow Shuriye, 28, takes a photo of Eaken Shafa, 56, and her grandson Kadar in Nanighi village for the womens photo story. CARE is helping the women share how climate change Tamara Plush/ CARE 2011 impacts them in the hopes that their stories will not only help others understand and address their problems, but build greater awareness about womens concerns within the village itself. They are doing so through community-driven photo stories where members of the village work with CARE staff and local journalists to create short videos with photos and narration in their own voice. The photo stories are part of a monitoring and evaluation system used by CAREs Adaptation Learning Programme for Africa (ALP) a five-year programme working with communities to increase the capacity for vulnerable people to adapt to a changing climate.

These stories are not created in isolation. They build on wider discussions with community members and CARE about the most severe climate change impacts that need to be addressed in their village. These discussions are at the core of creating longer-term climate change adaptation plans for the village, with the support of local governments and other service providers. Three groups were selected to make photo stories women, elder men and younger men as each of them are affected by the drought in different ways. The womens group said that increasing livestock and human diseases due to drought are impacting them most. They have fears as the droughts continue to increase and become more severe in North Eastern Kenya. Their stories also show how they are coping with the problems such as starting a savings group initiative called a merry-go-round so they can support each other in jobs such as mat-making, tea selling and running small sales kiosks (View www.careclimatechange.org/videos/africaalp).

To develop the community stories, local journalists and CARE staff were trained in technically making the stories, as well as using a participatory storytelling process. The villagers worked with them in a two-day workshop setting to decide what to say and what to show about the impacts of drought and their coping strategies. This process also served to open the eyes of some of the journalists who had not worked directly with this community before, despite it being less than two hours from the main town in the district. I saw that the community is not idle as climate change takes toll on them, instead they are becoming adaptable. I may even say industrious, said Abdisalan Ahmed from Standard Media. My initial understanding was that CARE gives aid during a humanitarian crisis. But I came to realise that CARE is also empowering communities to assist them so that they can become self reliant. After the stories were narrated by the community, the journalists and CARE staff went to Nanighi village to photograph the story scenes with the women and mens groups. For the womens group, they had talked with their Asha Klas Abdullahi, 29, shows her milkneighbors about the project, and chose to photograph some of their selling business as part of the womens hardships like having malnourished children in the village and sick photostory in Nanighi village. Tamara Plush/CARE 2011 animals. But they also wanted to show their business initiatives such as selling milk, to garner more support. But there was still fear of having their video shown widely, and one of the women who had originally told her story asked for her voice not to be used as she feared her husbands reaction when he found out she had spoken out in such a way. CARE agreed to use another womans voice and to show the videos first to only the women, and they could decide who to show it to later. After editing the video for laptops and cell phones, CARE staff and the journalists returned to the village to show their films to the storytellers and village leaders. When we showed the videos in the village, the women were still reluctant to have the men see their stories because they usually do not talk in group meetings. So we agreed to send all the men out of the meeting after seeing the elder mens and young mens videos, said Tamara Plush, CAREs Climate Change Communications Community leaders and the men and women storytellers watch their videos in Coordinator, who facilitated the photo Nanighi village. Tamara Plush/CARE 2011 story activity. However, after watching the mens videos, male elders in the group talked about how important it was to also hear from the women since they are part of the community, and asked the women to show their film. This was a powerful statement, and you could see the pride on the womens faces. After the viewing, the women decided that not only could their husbands and fellow villagers watch their films in future screenings, but that they wanted their story told widely to children in their village to raise awareness on climate change, in other villages where CARE works, to Kenyan policy-makers, and to the world. We understand now how sharing our information with the local community helps people understand more about activities for women in this village, said Asha Klas Abdullahi, 29. The elders who watched have appreciated what we have done, and no one is criticising it. It gives us more confidence to share our stories. Contact for additional photos; more information:

Tamara Plush, Communications Coordinator Poverty, Environment and Climate Change Network tplush@careclimatechange.org Contact for stories/media on drought in the Horn of Africa Sandra Bulling, Communications Officer CARE International - Geneva telephone +41.22.795.1033 / fax +41.22.795.1029 / mobile + 41.792.056.951 email bulling@careinternational.org Contact for more on the Adaptation Learning Programme for Africa (ALP) Fiona Percy, Programme Coordinator fpercy@careclimatechange.org or alp@careclimatechange.org www.careclimatechange.org/adaptation-initiatives/alp -------------Digital Photo Stories: CARE will continue showing the digital photo stories in the Nanighi villages to raise awareness about climate change impacts so change can be understood and monitored over time, as well as in the five other communities it is working with in the region through the ALP programme. As well, the videos will be shared between communities in Kenya and other African countries where ALP works, as well as with local and national governments and donors to hear community voices and evidence in a powerful way. Using this new process of digital photo storytelling, CARE will work with the Nanighi community members through the lifetime of the ALP programme to record adaptation activities other adaptation practitioners to share experiences and methods with other communities, and around the world. However, they also have an eye on the future with ideas such as battery-powered projectors or videos downloaded to village cell phones to share the stories more widely. The Adaptation Learning Programme (ALP) for Africa aims to increase the capacity of vulnerable households in Sub-Saharan Africa to adapt to climate variability and change. It is active in 40 communities in across Ghana, Niger, Mozambique and Kenya. Towards this end, the ALP is: 1) Developing and applying innovative approaches to Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) to generate best practice models; 2) Empowering local communities and civil society organisations to have a voice in decision-making on adaptation; 3) Promoting best practice models for CBA among adaptation practitioners; and 4) Aiming to influence national, regional and international adaptation policies and plans. Gender equality and diversity constitute a particular focus for the ALP. The ALP programme is supported by the United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DfID), The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland and the Austrian Development Cooperation. http://www.careclimatechange.org/adaptation-initiatives/alp CARE International is a leading aid organisation with more than 65 years experience fighting global poverty and delivering emergency assistance. In 70 countries, CARE works with the poorest communities to improve basic health and education, enhance rural livelihoods and food security, increase access to clean water and sanitation, and expand economic opportunity. Our long-term development assistance and emergency relief initiatives are currently benefiting more than 55 million people around the world. CARE is helping the most worlds most vulnerable communities adapt to the impacts of climate change. www.careclimatechange.org.