Vizzes, Voices and Videos to empower a community
Our project with Video Volunteers introduced the Viz for Social Good's community to the use of video as a medium to hear voices of the community.
Video Volunteers enables marginalised citizens to hold the government accountable, by telling their stories to the world and launching impact campaigns through video. Their impact videos are inspirational stories of bottom-up change that document how community media has led to concrete change.
"Collaborating with the Viz for Social Good team and its volunteers has been an incredible experience for us. The project team, Frederic Fery and Aishwarya Sivakumar, were a pleasure to work with, and we are grateful to all the volunteers who generously contributed their skills, time, and energy to create over 30 fascinating data dashboards. Each visualization provided unique perspectives and insights that were thrilling to discover." Tony D'souza, Product Manager
It is always a difficult choice for our partners to choose the visualizations that make it to the final event. Our volunteers do an amazing job of bringing the data to life and showcasing the social impact. There were 34 submissions from around the world and volunteers used the data visualization tool of their choice. Congrats to our volunteers Ron Klangnarong, Candice Che, Allyson Wood, Maria Florencia Carril and Elijah Sisson who had the opportunity present their work to the Video Volunteers
Another submission to highlight that really impressed the Video Volunteers team was from Martina Dossi.
Not only do charities witness the art of the possible through the talents of the volunteers, the collaboration with Viz for Social Good gives them insight into their own data. This was the case with Video Volunteers who used this project to question what other data needs to be collected and what new insights can potentially be uncovered. These insights often lead to process changes.
They are thinking about opening up their data for co-creation as part of their larger strategy and working with Viz for Social Good was one of the ways to put their plan to action.
“This project is a good beginning. What we need to do next is to make more visualisations that show how our data compares to official data, by bringing in data sets from other sources , such as government officials. Our ultimate goal is that our data can be used to derive policy insights.” Jessica Mayberry, Founding Director, Video Volunteers
Impact of Video Volunteers and Viz for Social Good collaboration
● The project was an experiment to unpack their own data visually and see what trends and patterns were emerging from a programmatic lens, and also from the lens of the impact That Video Volunteers are working towards creating on the ground.
● The project helped to connect to their efforts of understanding and question what it takes to open up their data (which is a form of citizen generated data) to other stakeholders to co-create with it.
● Helped the team to question what other data needed to be gathered and what new insights could potentially be uncovered.
● The internal project team was able to gather insights from the data and make changes in their work.
“The project has reinforced my belief in the power of data visualization and storytelling. The outputs of their visualizations have given us new ideas and inspiration for how we can better use data and visualizations to drive positive change in our work” Tony D'souza, Product Manager.
The Viz for Social Good team is grateful to Video Volunteers for opening up their data, hearts and time to collaborate with our volunteers.