Telling your own story

As in other many countries, in Colombia Corruption is a social problem whose victims and heroes are not easy to recognize, this is one of the main reasons that makes difficult involving citizens in the fight against it.

Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index 2010 ranked Colombia 78 among 178. Besides perception, the Anti-corruption Office of the Executive branch estimates that Colombia loses each year between USD 1,2 and 1,5 billion on corruption, resources that could be spent in providing basic education for more than 3 million Colombian children.

Besides, the situation for young people is alarming: 80% of youth in Latin America consider they should mistrust everybody and even if 58% prefers democracy to another type of government, 42% don’t care about the type of regime or would approve an authoritarian regime under specific circumstances. Youth people in Colombia are extremely vulnerable and corruption is one of the main causes of this vulnerability. But also youth people can drive the forces for a change, they just need to be sensitized, trained and empowered.

Taking this into account, and with Ocasa’s experience of more than eight years working with youth in the democratic field, I decided to create a pilotage of an online-TVshow that could allow us to attract young Colombians to understand the fight against corruption as an urgent need for our development, and also to train them in the use of concrete tools to doing it so.

Thanks to the British Council and the Global Youth Anticorruption Network, from which I and Ocasa are part, we developed the project: Telling your own history, that developed six TV shows called CorruptiON in OFF.

Each program has one main topic and basic sections to treat it:

‘Pulse to Pulse’: Short interviews with young people and others on the street, who, in simple statements, answer questions that we will treat during the program. These responses allow us to measure the set of knowledge that people have on the general topic to be discussed.
‘Let the experts speak’: Para cada programa entrevistamos a al menos un experto que nos pueda contar en detalle sobre el tema a discutir.
‘Fight ICT’: Understanding that the Internet is critical to the youth of this generation, in each program we will review tools, portals and other elements from the new technologies can help us better understand, or practice, the topic being discussed.
‘Heroes and victims’: It is important to show young people that corruption costs lives, so some programs will tell the story of real victims of corruption. In others, we will show the life stories of young people who despite the circumstances, fight against corruption in their communities.
‘Top anti-corruption’: In this section we will recommend videos, movies, books, songs, events, among others, so young people can deepen their understanding of the issues treated in each program.

During six months we developed the following programs:

First program. Introduction and presentation of the series. November 30^th 2011. http://www.priradiotv.com/
Second program. Corruption: what it is and how does it affects us. December 12 http://www.priradiotv.com/#
Third program. Access to information. January 31 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe7rhOUBCsg&list=UUJWNc10t9X1JtB...
Fourth program. Planning for development. February 29 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIXtobGlN-g&list=UUJWNc10t9X1JtB...
Fifth program. Citizen audit activities. March 27 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsA_javUqCo&list=UUJWNc10t9X1JtB...
Sixth program. Youth as changemakers. April 26 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX_FyjGKQbs&list=UUJWNc10t9X1JtB...

In total, according with Pri’s reports and our YouTube channel statistics, the programs were seen by more than 2.200 people. And we are starting new strategies to get a bigger audience.

Also, once finished the pilotage, we are trying to return to our original idea of making a live program, and we will explore also having a CorruptiON in OFF in radio.

OTHER RELEVANT LINKS

The program’s short trailer, long trailer
The project was featured in three radio programs:

‘Tarjeta de identidad’, featured on March 15^th, in the radio station of the University of Cauca, Unicauca Estereo 104,1. http://emisora.unicauca.edu.co/radio.php
La Calera fm, May 2th
Radio Techotiva, May 3rd www.radiotechotiba.tk

The daily paper called ADN, printed on March 13^th one note about the project. This newspaper is distributed in Bogotá and has an audience of minimum 125.000 people each day (is of free distribution). http://issuu.com/adncol/docs/adn-bogota-marzo13-2?mode=embed&la...
Also, the project was featured in these other websites: