Global community of professionals working in Communication for Development
There’s little chance you will forget the home quarantine of 2020. But the details will fade over time — unless you create something that lasts. Kids around the country are doing just that by making their own newspapers. They’ve become reporters, photographers, editors, art directors and even cartoonists. And they are doing what good journalists do: keeping their communities (or maybe just their families) informed and entertained.
PhD student Mr Damien Tomaselli together with some Centre for Communication, Media and Society (CCMS) staff members are part of a digital comic called Don’t Panic. An international team to help increasingly exasperated parents to explain to their children why they are in lockdown and how to cope produced the comic, which also presents information about the coronavirus. The comic was composed by a German graphic designer, Mr Bernd Höllen and was built by Tomaselli, a digital narrative specialist. The project is offered in many languages, including English, isiZulu, Afrikaans, German, French, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Armenian, Polish and Portuguese. The CCMS has helped to distribute the comic, securing voluntary translators from across Africa and the world to populate different language versions, with 15 languages now uploaded.
UNDRR has created a guide entitled «Words into Action Guidelines: Engaging children and youth in disaster risk reduction and resilience building», that addresses how to support and engage children and youth around the world in disaster risk reduction to fully implement the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.
UNICEF Malawi has created this children’s animation video about COVID-19.