It’s allmost so far. We are going to bring a preparation visit to Manila in the Philippines. We will finally meet the women from ‘Defend Job Philippines’ who have been very inspiring, enthousiastic about our project and helpfull with everything that needs to be arranged. Together we decided to set up big plans for the coming year. But before all this will get a chance, we need to bring a pre-visit.

Since all three of us happen to be in different countries at the moment we’re using skype to prepare the big visit. Who brings what, how many kilo’s can we bring, tripods, camera’s, battery’s, muskitonets etc.. We also have to prepare our meetings, possible workshops, trainings and find out who to reach where. We’re all super excited!

Defend Job Philippines is a broad campaign of workers demanding decent jobs and better working and living conditions in the Philippines. Defend Job was established in  2009 by displaced workers of Triumph International when their factory was closed and hundreds of workers were dismissed uncompensated. The center tries to support the interests of the laid off workers and their initiatives, e.g. the Displaced Womens’ Cooperative. Defend Job reaches out to a variety of effected people and has evolved as coordinating center for workers’ struggles and campaigns in the Philippines and abroad. At the same time the center aims to create more awareness among workers about their rights and wants to find ways how to share this knowledge.

Since lingerie brand Triumph closed down their factory in Manila (Philippines), the dismissed workers have come up with brave and inspiring initiatives to deal with their current situation.

By means of a participatory video project we want to trigger the creative and inspirational energy in these women to enable the ex-Triumph worker community in Manila to mobilise effective support for their case. This will include the use of new media tools, such as video blogs, video sites, live streaming, and use of social networks. Individuals of the community will learn about video activism and become skilled video makers on the ground who will produce and spread images of individual’s everyday life, worries and motivations.

This project will experiment with adding a new dimension to traditional storytelling. In many cultures telling stories to each other is a way of keeping history, culture, tradition but also certain perspectives and ideologies alive. By connecting the art of storytelling to new digital media we transfer this tradition into a more modern but possibly also a more maintainable and ‘usable’ way.