Select Page

Client: Witness Project

Duties: Project management, graphic design, event production, workshop facilitator

Click to visit project website.

Click to view the project’s short film, REBECCA’S STORY.

WITNESS Project was created in response to the entrenched culture of child-directed and gender-based violence in Caribbean nation of Guyana, South America. Under the guidance of the non-profit organization, The Margaret Clemons Foundation, WITNESS Project isĀ  a youth arts initiative encourages participating young people to utilize the arts to educate their peers on various social issues (ie street harassment, family violence, literacy, etc.

In 2011 I came on board the project as U.S. project manager and worked with an international team to launch our first project, WITNESS Project Turns Guyana Inside Out. In this effort we teamed up with French artist and TED prize winner JR on his global photography project Inside Out. With support from the government of Guyana’s ministry of Health & Human Services, we gathered 15 Guyanese youth, supplied them with cameras and then created oversized posters that we then posted in high traffic areas and schools throughout the capitol.

IN 2012 we continued the project using journalism and creative writing as our platform. In partnership with local newspaper, Stabroek News, WITNESS Project youth were given two pages in the Sunday paper for one year. In this section the kids told their stories of the society’s violence and hope to end it from their POV.

When the newspaper project ended, we moved onto film. We teamed up with local Peace Corps members and artists to set up screenwriting and filmmaking workshops for the kids. After an intense month of work, they turned one of their newspaper stories into a short screenplay, REBECCA’S STORY. We flew in American filmmakers to guide the kids as they filmed a 13 min film that has gone on to screen in several film festivals and receive a Paul Robeson Honorable Mention for a Short Narrative Award from the Newark Black Film Festival.

On each project, and as WITNESS Project continues to evolve now into a workshop based program that services schools and community groups throughout Guyana, I worked with an international team to source equipment, staff and partnerships to bring each project to life. In addition to designing many of the promotional and workshop materials I also led several youth workshops for each wave of the project.