Our Voices: Collecting the Stories
Donation protected
Our Voices is a community-led film and documentary project on the Honduran island of Utila that aims to unite conservation efforts and local cultural history. Located in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Utila is an increasingly popular tourist and environmentalist destination for its affordable diving excursions, vibrant landscapes, and ecological diversity. The tourism boom has impacted the environment and cultural livelihoods on the island in a multitude of ways.
Help Close the Gap Between Conservation and Cultural History!
Our project aims to create a community-led digital oral history and photography project. Youth-led video interviews with local elders will be edited into film shorts and showcased alongside photographic exhibits of local relationships to the Utilian landscape to help preserve and communicate the island’s rich cultural history and relationships to the places and species unique to the island.
Meet Our Team:
Our Voices is a collaborative project with the Bay Island Conservation Association (BICA) , Dr. Suzanne Kent of the Colorado State University and Dr. Keri Brondo of the University of Memphis. This project emerged from a collaborative conservation program sponsored by Colorado State University’s Center for Collaborative Conservation.
Our Project Associates, Safi Jackson and Megan Bodden, Utilian locals, are very excited to begin this project! Their role on the team is to learn ethnographic interviewing techniques, design and conduct local interviews, and collaborate on storyboarding and producing local film footage regarding the island's unique cultural heritage.
Safi, age 20, is passionate about Utila's tranquility, safety, and beautiful clean beaches and reefs. Her hobbies include soccer, volleyball and baseball.
Megan, age 17, is eager to learn more about her home's history and culture, so that she can pass on this proud hertiage to future generations. She enjoys going to the gym, learning and teaching others about the island's environment, and working with the BICA.
Suriel Duenas is the corrdinator of the Reef Leaders Program and BICA liaison.
The Project and Your Impact:
Two project associates will be trained in ethnographic interviewing techniques to elicit stories and memories from elders, joined with photographic and video documentation on the following themes: (1) The island’s cultural and linguistic history; (2) Unique features, spaces, places, and species; and, (3) Adaptation to the local environment and changing adaptive strategies over the course of their lifetime. The project associates will work with a local coordinator and US-based anthropologists on storyboarding and editing the film(s). We will host a culminating event in summer 2018.
Our team has raised enough funds to cover the labor involved to train Megan and Safi in interviewing techniques and storyboarding, as well as supplies for the final event. We are seeking your support to help us purchase the film equipment they need to collect the stories of local residents. Equipment will remain on the island, under BICA's care.
2 iPads,
2 tripods,
2 protective cases,
2 USB microphones for external audio recording, and
LumaFusion video editing application for iPad
Total Needed = $1677.00
Photo credit to Pamela OrtegaTHANK YOU!!
Organizer and beneficiary
Keri Brondo
Organizer
Memphis, TN
Keri Brondo
Beneficiary
