Reflections and Comments on Our Neighbourhood Meeting

Reflection on Neighbourhood Meeting by members of our group:

1) Dominique Little
The neighbourhood meeting was mainly centred around the youth of extensions six and seven. The Voices of the Youth soundslide sparked a small conversation about how contrary to what people may have said, the problem is not that there are not enough activities.

The problem is that people are not getting involved. There are sports teams, dance groups, drama groups, yet not everybody is willing to participate. This again relays the theme of the soundslide, that it is people’s own choice whether they want to do something or not.

There was not much break between the two soundslides that were viewed, I think that had there been more time, a better discussion could have formed about the other themes present in our soundslide. The rest of the meeting had successful debate about getting involved in cricket as well as on the ‘save our schools’ project.

2) Debbie Liebenberg

Although about 15 people had come to attend our meeting we were dissapointed to see that none of the adults were there despite the fact that we had personally delivered invitations to three headmasters of schools in the area and a police spokesperson.... The young audience seemed to be entertained by the media that was presented despite unforseen technicalities which arose. An important issue that was brought up in the meeting was the discrimination against people based on their dress style rather than the work they do.

This debate arose when a tv documentary was presented about two men (who happened to dress like Rastafarians) who had started projects in these areas to encourage youth development and empowerment. The young audience mentioned that it was difficult taking someone who dressed that way seriously despite all his good efforts.

3) Phakamani Lisa
Overall, the meeting was a success. We expected and had invited more adults but non came to the meeting. We came to realise that the meeting was about the youth so what better audience to have than them.

It was good to see the people who were in the audio slides and videos getting involved in the discussions. There seemed to be no objections to the manner in which they were represented. This is often a problem when it comes to editing footage and sound.

All of the outputs should be given to each school so that they can use them in the future. In that way, we would have done our jobs as journalists to point out certain issues and create a forum for those affected.

There were a few members who felt like they got nothing from the meeting, however, what was discussed in the first half of the meeting is exactly what was discussed in the second half. The audience felt more relaxed and felt they could better articulate themselves in vanacular.

Lets not forget that this production is not for our benefit, its for the community we were working in. From the audiences response, we sparked a lot of debate. The first time we went into the community, I asked a young lady what she thought could be done about the crime levels and she said she didn't know, she hadn't thought about it. I now can compare this to Thursday evening and conclude that we reached our objectives.

5) Andrew Wassung
After the last minute rush of editing a soundslide, it was onto the neighbourhood meeting. We arrived a bit late, but once things got underway if feel the meeting went well in general. This, contrary to many of the other group members feelings, and the fact that the TV ‘doccies’ didn’t play properly. This was a pity because the documentaries certainly sparked quite a lot of interesting debate.

The debate was constructive as part of the problem is that people judge people before they know them, or they judge them according to how they look, even though they may be doing great things. Ace was the main example of this in the documentary screened. It was interesting to engage with the community members about this afterwards for me, because it was hard in the heat of the Xhosa moment to keep up a bit.

The turnout was not huge but youngsters came, and that’s who we were targeting. Also, the cricket guys, who are mostly mid-20’s are definite examples to their youth in this community and a few of them turned up. They made it clear that they are more than willing to have anyone and everyone come and join them at the cricket nets. It was great to see the people who did attend actually taking a deep interest in what we had to show them. I do believe and hope that this project will change something in the community for the positive; even if it was just a reminder to the people that they should have hope.