Der Spiegel reports on Peace Counts in Ivory Coast

 

Under the title "The Power of Words," Der Spiegel reported in its August 24, 2009 edition on the Peace Counts project in Ivory Coast. The article describes the project's communication technique that uses an itinerant stage show, traveling around cities and villages, to reach illiterate audiences with features on Ivorian peacebuilders. Reports were also broadcast on radio and TV. We are delighted about the publicity, because it accurately reflects the resounding success of the project, which was carried out in cooperation with Zeitenspiegel and the Goethe Insitute in Abidjan and with additional financial support (after funding via the German foreign ministry fell through) from the Peter Becker Award of the University of Marburg.

We want to follow up the successful initiative with a new project this fall, hoping to integrate Ivorian photographers, reporters, and TV journalists in reporting on peacebuilders and cultural diversity in a land torn by civil war. A program similar to that in Ivory Coast will simultaneously be conducted in Guatemala. The project's objective: To strengthen conflict regions in their transition to democracy, in which media play an important role.

An excerpt from the article by Fiona Ehlers:

"... The Germans need light for the show to go on. They drive a Mercedes van belonging to the Goethe Institute into the middle of the square and aim the headlights at the stage. It could work. The show starts. It is called 'Faiseurs de Paix,' a kind of village theater with mobile radio show. A storyteller takes the stage, Fortuné, 48, a well-known actor from the capital Abidjan. He tells about a lawyer who frees innocent people from prisons and a woman raising 52 war orphans, along with a project that disarms former rebels and finds them work and a teacher who resolves conflicts between nomadic herders and farmers. And because there is no electricity and no big screen, Tilman Wörtz, 36, a reporter from southern Germany, walks around with his laptop showing photos to illustrate the stories. Ivorian photographers took the pictures and Ivorian journalists wrote the accompanying features, with training from Wörtz and his colleagues at Zeitenspiegel. The central idea is development aid through the power of traditional narrative, the power of words in times filled with conflict, a project as parable about what journalism can achieve."