Open Call for Applicants – Building effective storytelling capacity among Ethiopian civil society and local media
Faith In Action, in partnership with New Media Advocacy Project (NMAP), is seeking participants who are engaged in the democratic reform process and who would like to develop enhanced storytelling capacity in their work communicating judicial and legal reform in Ethiopia. NMAP and Faith in Action are working to increase the knowledge and capacity of civil society organizations and local media to create effective narrative strategies and visual media campaigns in Ethiopia, within the framework of the Feteh (Justice) Activity awarded to Millennium DPI Partners, LLC by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
We invite applications for a 12-month mentorship program running from June 2022 through May 2023 designed to support individuals from civil society organizations and local media organizations in creating and distributing visual storytelling projects that advance a new narrative supporting judicial and legal reform and Ethiopia’s future.
Over the course of the program, participants will create visual stories of their choosing focusing on justice issues in Ethiopia for distribution in their own communities. The media produced may be in any format that can be shared with the public (e.g. short-form video, web-docs, animation, crowd-sourced community storytelling, comics, photography, etc.) around the theme of advancing judicial and legal reform in Ethiopia.
Over the course of the program, mentee participants will:
- Produce and distribute one visual storytelling piece on a related issue of their choosing—this issue must align with democratic reform watchdog activities, public perception, and awareness creation on legal issues or justice sector reform;
- Receive in-depth mentoring on visual storytelling and production from international experts and regional professional mentors from culturally and artistically relevant backgrounds;
- Participate in workshops focused on narrative change concepts, storytelling approaches, and more;
- Participate in meetings twice a month with a mentor, who will support participants in the conception, production, and distribution of their projects;
- Receive a small grant to produce their projects.
The mentorship program will begin with a virtual kick-off meeting in June 2022, followed by an in-person intensive workshop series in July, a virtual workshop in August 2022, a second virtual convening in November 2022 focused on reviewing the first versions of each project, and a third virtual convening in May 2023 that will focus on disseminating final projects and impact. Participants will be expected to commit an average of 10 hours per week during the program, including regular meetings with mentors and independent production work.
Participants will be limited to up to 5 media participants and up to 10 CSO participants, and the selection of mentees will be determined based on criteria including:
- Evaluation of the feasibility of proposed projects;
- Unique and creative project concept;
- Alignment with the principles of judicial and legal reform;
- Long-term vision and potential for impact;
- Diversity of the mentorship cohort;
- Ability and availability to meaningfully participate in English-language in-person and online training.
- The applicant being from a registered CSO/media organization which is actively working in the legal/judicial reform space
At the end of the mentorship program, participants will have learned new multimedia and storytelling skills, which they will be able to leverage to create successful projects that advance narratives surrounding democratic reform.