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News Tidbits
STAIRWAY COMPLETES ANIMATION TOOL KIT Posted: September 2003
It was a long trip from Manila (or Quezon City to some) to South Forbes Park especially on a “Baclaran day” (Wednesday) but several friends in the NGO community and DSWD courageously cruised through EDSA upon the invitation of the Finnish Ambassador Raimo Anttola and his wife Madame Piiju. Dressed casually as we are, familiar faces greeted each other --- representatives from ChildHope, Kaibigan Ermita Outreach, Lunduyan, DSWD, DepED, CPU-Net, Web Kubo and CPTCSA. Each of us was welcomed by the friendly ambassador to his home, shaking our manicure-free hands, for the premiere showing of “Daughter”. After the successful national and European tour of the musicale “Goldtooth”, Lars Jorgensen and Monica Ray of Stairway Foundation completed another brilliant project, this time, an animated advocacy video focusing on the issue of incest. The first time I had a glimpse of the project was last March of this year. When I say glimpse, there were just sketches. I remember Monica reading the script for the audience composed of teachers from different schools nationwide as Lars patiently shift each slide on queue. That was not a long while at all for me. But on the night of September 17, the video with the accompanying manual was in its final form. The story was written by Monica Ray, who is “mothering” a number of street children in Stairway’s residential center located in Puerto Galera. Culling the lines directly from the children’s sharing, the draft was finalized through consultations with CPTCSA and several volunteers including the storyboard artist, Paw Ravn. “Daughter” is about a girl who was molested several times by her own father. Her mother works as a domestic helper overseas and leaves her with the father. Being the eldest, she was expected to be in charge of her other four siblings. She tried telling about the abuse to several people including her aunt, the parish priest and her teacher. No one paid attention. She told her mother but the mother did not believe and castigated her. Later she also found out that her father is also molesting her younger sister. The final scene was the girl dialing the number of the Child Protection Unit. The animation, dubbing, and scoring did justice to the script. The Philippine Animation Studio did a fine job. Running time is less than 30 minutes. “It is not [the kind of cartoon film] that you would leave your children to watch [while you do the dishes]” as Lars remarked to the audience to open the forum. With the accompanying manual, they call it the Animation Tool Kit for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse. Users will be trained how to conduct the session with the children to ensure proper handling of any impromptu disclosure. CPTCSA was involved in writing the manual and will be helping out disseminate the tool kit to the schools nationwide. The audience came up with suggestions like the use of a real male voice, using a tune familiar to the children, and several more seemingly sound suggestions. But I think I am most hopeful with the idea brought up by one diplomat guest that the tool kit can be shared with other countries. Everyone can use the same story and animation if translated into different languages. That will be cool. One guest wondered why in the film, the responsibility of reporting the abuse was left to the child. Lars responded, “That’s exactly the point. Children approached adults who would not listen to them. This tool kit should be able to encourage the kids to end the silence and assert their rights.” |