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Selecting the Winning Ideas
After
each contest, the winning scenarios are selected by juries made up of
former contest winners and other young people, specialists in HIV prevention,
treatment and care, people living with HIV, and experts from the realm
of film production.
In the 2005 selection process, a total of 234
people from 203 different organisations served as jurors at the national
or international level. In many cases, the selection process provides
organisations working in the same area with an opportunity to get to know
one another and to collaborate directly for the first time. The participation
of individuals from a range of different fields creates a forum for rich
debate, with jurors able to learn from one another's unique perspective.
Jury
members have discovered that the scenarios provide remarkable insights
into the thoughts, ideas, language, and perspectives of the young people.
They see the selection process as a valuable means of assessing young
people's needs and of evaluating the communication work around HIV/AIDS
that has been carried out to date.
The average SCENARIOS FROM
AFRICA juror reads over 100 creative works on HIV/AIDS by young
people. The entries are also discussed at length by groups of jurors.
Through this process, jurors are able to identify areas where young people
have misunderstood important messages, and to formulate ways to adjust
the response to the epidemic so as to take young people's views and needs
into account. After studying the scenarios, many jurors identify ways
to apply their newfound knowledge in the context of their own work. The
jurors' findings are also compiled in a report on Jurors'
Observations and Recommendations for wider circulation.
When
jurors are asked how they have benefited from the selection process, their
most common response is that they have been able to evaluate the impact
of HIV-related activities to date. That evaluation might apply to the
overall efforts of the HIV community in a given country or zone, to the
programmes of an individual organisation or school, or to their own work
in the field. The selection process is a way for jurors to identify geographic
zones that require special attention. Those who serve on international
SCENARIOS FROM AFRICA juries have the
opportunity to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of HIV-related
efforts in various countries.
The
thousands of creative, often highly imaginative works contributed by the
contest participants are a unique goldmine of information for researchers,
prevention specialists, trainers, members of theatre groups, and so on.
During the selection process, jurors invariably express dismay over the
fact that only an extremely small percentage of scenarios will be turned
into a SCENARIOS FROM AFRICA film.
They come across many creative works that they would like to make use
of in their programmes. Jurors are actively encouraged to do just that,
as long as the young author is always prominently acknowledged and none
of the scenarios is used in a for-profit venture.
Typically, the group of people who state that
they have learned the most about HIV/AIDS in the course of jury work are
those who work in film production. SCENARIOS
FROM AFRICA juries include directors, producers,
scriptwriters, actors and actresses, and costume designers. Each year,
one or more of the internationally acclaimed directors who go on to transform
the winning ideas into short films is a member of the final selection
jury.
A
team of filmmakers has transformed some of the winning scenarios from
the contests into a collection of 28 films, each between 2 and 15 minutes
long. Wherever possible, the young contest winner works with the director
and production team during the film production process.
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