The Mindanao News and Information Cooperative Center, a cooperative composed of independent, professional journalists, has teamed with Jean Claire A. Dy, a Media Arts professor at Univ. Phillipines Mindanao, to create a Digital Storytelling Center Mindanao. While the project initially was created for the college students to store their stories, the partnership with the journalists has expanded the initiative to include stories gathered at “digital storytelling workshops” around the region.

Mindanao is the south-easternmost island of the Phillippines, and also the name of a group of islands there.

Dy explains the thinking behind the project:

“…[D]igital storytelling offers many uses aside from entertainment. I come from the belief that all stories inform, instruct and entertain. In other words, stories in whatever form have and must stir the mind, and push the envelope of what is considered normalized.

I learned that digital storytelling could be a tool for change (socially, behaviorally, etc.); perhaps not in a gargantuan global way, but change nonetheless perhaps in terms of paradigms and outlooks. Digital storytelling is basically, a communicative practice thereby making it one of the most effective ways of bringing forth information to an audience or individual. Because it operates on the merging of different media—text, images, and sound—it can be effective as an information tool.

Every personal story, no matter how trivial for some, holds a kernel of wisdom. Hence, I believe that it is important that an individual’s and not just a collective’s personal narratives be heard. My dream then is to widen this scope of digital storytelling around Mindanao; to really gather more stories from people in various communities. Teach them how to create digital stories on their own so that they can share these stories. After all, these are their narratives.”

The feed for the Mindanao storytelling podcast is here.