Why cartoons
are better than my Inglish?
Dear colleagues, as IFAD is using lots of visual
tools for getting the message across cultural borders we would like to share our
small experience with the Learning Routes Cartoon. For PROCASUR cartoons,
animation, comics, videos and photos are making easier to disseminate our
proposal and most important to open fruitful conversations. Difficult topics as
south-south cooperation, Learning Routes or social innovation are easier to
comprehend through visual tools, especially if they reflect concrete situations
the group feels empathy with.
This cartoon was built one year ago and is
doing its job when talking to farmers, indigenous people, project directors,
ministers, donors and professionals in Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
Even at IFAD HQ, Rome!
When this Cartoon was created we were stuck in trying to
communicate to diverse audiences how a Learning Route looks like, what its main
principles, dynamics and partners are. It took us three months to build the
Cartoon and as it´s programmed in flash we can easily change all the texts –
that´s just about 25 words in total - to different languages. In this way, the
cartoon is available now in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French and at very
low cost can be adapted to any other language. One very important critic we
have received so far is that even it reflects the cooperation among
practitioners from the South, all the participants are men. Definitely we must
correct that. Also to make it less than one minute long and add some music.
Cartoon 2.0 will be out soon.
At the moment we are working in animations and
comics that tell the story of our hosts and routes learners. This time we choose
animation/cartoon over comic as we found easier for the grass-root
organizations to understand a moving narration than to organize ideas frame by
frame as the comic does. Also because the animation allows the facilitator of PROCASUR
activities to talk over it as it´s displayed, helping us to reach the concrete
group we are working with at that time.
We are very kind to participate in these conversations
and exchange with others trying the visual way to make ideas travel faster.
Many thanks and sorry for my writing, cartoons are better than my Inglish.
Ariel Halpern
Learning Routes Programme for the Asia and the
Pacific
PROCASUR Corporation
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