OneMinutesJr workshop in Kyrgyzstan - Day 4

More filming is on the agenda on the fourth day of the OneMinutesJr workshop in Bishkek. Half of the films have been shot, so it is time now to wrap up the others and get to the computers for the editing process. All films today can be filmed in different locations in the Kyrgyz capital.

Ulan (15) takes us to his home. He has a real home, with his mother, his father and eight brothers and sisters. His home is only about 12 square meters big, much to small for a family of eleven people. Therefore, his parents have placed him and several others of the older children of the family in a children's home. Ulan says: "I am happy that I still have a family and I always look forward to seeing them, but I also know that we are too poor to afford a bigger place and that our apartment is not big enough for all of us."

In the afternoon, we visit an institution that gives street children from Bishkek a temporary home. The children sleep in dormitories with 15 beds per room. Privacy is basically unheard of, just like at Ulan's family's room, where three generations live on 12 square meters. The children here are happy that they have a place to sleep at least and that they can visit the adjacent school, but it is still tough for them to grow up without their parents.

Maftuna (15) lives here. Her film is about the stigma she carries, being a child from a home for homeless children. She has experienced social exclusion at school and this is exactly what she will show in her OneMinutesJr video. It's a scene from her own life when her new classmates exclude her just because of the fact that she doesn't have any parents anymore.

Almost all of the videos have been filmed now and "only" need to be edited before they are shown at the big presentation for everybody who has been involved in the process tomorrow in the late afternoon. It is remarkable that the children do not only talk about their lives in the institutions but also think a lot about how they got there or how others are getting there. Most of them come from broken or extremely poor families. The fact that many of them focus on "the road that leads to the children's home" is a reminder that when we talk about child care reform and children in institutions, it is always important to keep in mind that every effort should be made to protect children in their families, to educate parents and support them raising their own children as good as they can.

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - April 30, 2009 - Chris Schuepp

OneMinutesJr workshop in Kyrgyzstan - Day 3

Day 3 of the workshop in Bishkek is the big filming day. The 20 participants split up in three groups after breakfast and go out filming. One group takes a minibus to the Chui-Tokmok boarding-school about 90 minutes East of Bishkek. The second group faces a three hour drive to Panfilovska to the West of the Kyrgyz capital. The third groups has found locations for the filming in the city center of Bishkek, so they are the first to get the cameras rolling.Alina gets the equipment ready, decides that she wants to have Kanimet as her cameraman and off they go to the busiest street in Bishkek to interview people. Their question: "What can be done to make the lives of children in institutions better?" Sometimes it's good to simply ask thepeople in the streets to put things into perspective.

At about the same time Alina is done with her "vox pops", the Chui-Tokmok group reaches its destination. The main project here is to show the toilets - or the lack of toilets, to be precise. It was hard to believe for us when Olya told us about the sanitary situation in her boarding-school yesterday when she came up with the idea to produce her OneMinutesJr video about this. But what we see today is simply shocking and hard to describe.

There are four holes in the ground in a shack outside. There are no doors. There is no roof. There are mud puddles in front of two of the toilets and the other two holes in the ground also do not look very inviting. The girls from the boarding-school are all dressed up for the visitors from Bishkek, but their shiny shoes and white socks create a surreal image when you see them jumping between mud puddles and human feces. Everybody involved in the shooting of this film hopes that this situation will change with the upcoming forum in Bishkek - or even sooner. To the trainers it is immediately clear from the footage taken in Chui-Tokmok that this will be one of the most shocking films of the whole workshop.

However, it needs to be mentioned of course that the situation is not as bad in other places. Trainer David tells us about the caring and friendly atmosphere in Panfilovska when he returns in the evening from a long day out in the Kyrgyz villages and the boarding-schools there. "The children were hugged when they arrived and they really like it there. The whole team in the boarding-school really does its best to make them feel comfortable. The institution is poor, but they make the best of it and the atmosphere is really special", David tells the others in the evening.

Time to load some of the materials from today onto the laptops and start some editing. Tomorrow is another day with more films to shoot...

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - Chris Schuepp - April 29, 2009

OneMinutesJr workshop in Kyrgyzstan – Day 2

On the second day of the OneMinutesJr workshop in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the participants continue developing their ideas. Last night it started raining and it has not stopped since. Not the perfect weather for filming outside, so we focus on the films that can be shot indoors.

Anara (14) lives in a boarding school in Panfilova, about two hours West of Bishkek. She misses her mother and will write a letter to her, at least in the video she is producing. It is supposed to be a very touching letter and therefore Anara spends a lot of time on the best possible "composition" of the letter.

Sasha (15) also starts filming today. He wrote down all the question she is going to ask himself – and the answers, of course. The rest will be done in the editing and it will really look like the 15 year-old is talking to himself. Which in a way, he is, too...

A lot of things also need to be organized for tomorrow, which will be the big filming day. One group will go by minibus to their boarding school to shoot their films there. Another group will go to the center of the capital Bishkek to film there, including Alina, who will ask people in the streets how they think the lives of children in institutions can be improved.

On this second day of the workshop, the participating children already reveal more about their lives than they did on the opening day. The initial "distance" between them and the trainers is more or less gone and they talk about the unwritten law of the pecking order in their institutions. One of the boys who tells us how younger children are beaten up by the older ones does not want to make this the topic of his film. He is afraid that it might backfire on him. "I would get problems there, I think. And I probably wouldn't be picked anymore for interesting field trips and seminars like this one."

Another eye-opener is our discussion with Olya (15). There are 150 people in her boarding school and there are only two toilets, of which one is broken. So 150 people have to use one and the same toilet, not very hygenic at all...

It reminds me a bit of the world record the UNICEF National Committee for Belgium just set up a month ago on World Water Day when they arranged the biggest line ever to wait outside a toilet. But that was for advocacy purposes and not "for real". Here in Kyrgyzstan, it is "for real", but it might change for the better once Olya has finished her film and the experts and decision-makers at the international conference in Bishkek in May have also seen it.

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan – April 28, 2009 - Chris Schuepp

OneMinutesJr workshop in Kyrgyzstan – Day 1

20 children from four different institutions in Kyrgyzstan participate in a OneMinutesJr workshop in the capital Bishkek this week.

The youngsters – aged 10 to 17 years old – will share their stories and experiences from the respective children's home or residential school and produce their own 60-second films before the end of the week.

UNICEF and the NGO Everychild have worked together over the last few weeks to make this workshop happen – and today at 9 AM all invited children are in the conference room in Bishkek when the trainers David and Kristina from Amsterdam and Chris from Germany arrive.

The children's "mission" is clear: Express yourselves! Tell us what is good about the institutions you live and, but also what is not so good about them. The workshop this week will feed into a larger conference coming up in mid-May, also in Bishkek. "Building ad Reforming Child Care Systems in Central Asia, Azerbaijan and Turkey" will be on the agenda in about two weeks from today. And child participation will be one of the defining moments of the conference. The hand-on workshop that is taking place right now will produce 20 films that might have a huge effect on some of the discussions and the decisions when the politician and experts meet here in May.

After the usual routine of introductions and a crashcourse in OneMinutesJr techniques in the morning, the children start developing their own ideas right after lunch. Some are still struggling to put a structure to their thoughts that could evolve into a short-film, but some others already have it all planned out.

Maftuna (15) lives in a boarding-school near Bishkek and her big problem is the stigma she carries around with herself. For others, she is just "that girl from the children's home". She feels discriminated against and hopes she can change her situation and that of many others who share her fate with a film that shows that all children are the same and there is no reason to put her down.

Sasha (15) has been in a boarding-school for about 6 months now. He used to be a real trouble-maker and constantly got into arguments with his mother. Since he (was) moved into the boarding-school, his relationship to his mother has improved significantly. He's getting help on the one hand, as this is better than a broken home, but it is still far from equal to what children have in a functioning home environment. Sasha wants to show this in a OneMinutesJr video, in which – with a few editing tricks – he will interview himself.

Sergej (15) from Tokmok likes taking pictures and also lives in a boarding-school, about 1 ½ hours away from Bishkek. He likes it there, he says. Then he reflects on his life in a bit more detail: "Well, I like it there most of the time. I mean, it's ok there. However, we don't have computers and our library doesn't have many interesting books. Let me put it this way: It's possible to live there..."

These words at the end of his film should be a wake-up call to the decision-makers at the conference in May. "It's possible to live there..." - is that really all we have to offer to the children in institutions in Central Asia?

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan – April 27, 2009 - Chris Schuepp