A retrospect of RefVoice-Our work in 2016
Our idea: Οur Idea is RefVoice. Refvoice is a transmedia platform with reportages and photo-reportages created by refugees themselves. More specifically, it is comprised of stories, photos, drawings, and every other form of journalism and art our refugees have talent in.
Have you ever wondered what refugees have to say? Is it a normal thing for people who suffer like them to seal all types of expression? Have they lost every right to be artistic in any way just because they kicked them out of their own homeland? These and many more were the questions that came to our minds and that is why RefVoice was created!
Our potential users will be both refugees and people from other countries as well that will see their content. We decided to create 4 potential users. One man and one woman refugee and one man that is informed about the refugee situation. We also decided to create a fourth user that hasn't considered too much the refugee as an individual but is open to exploring.
The reason we are writing about our difficulties is simple. One of our basic values is honesty in information. It wouldn’t be right for the philosophy of RefVoice to keep a project journal including only the successful moments. Besides, which project doesn’t have ups and downs? The point is how you deal with difficulties that come up. We decided to confront this “down-moment” with an announcement to search for a new team.
We asked 8 people,2 Americans and 4 Greeks, what they think about some aspects of RefVoice. Their answers helped us a lot to understand what we can correct and what we are doing already right. We chose to present some of those answers below.
We all have ideas that seem appealing in the beginning, but for some reason, we luck in drawing the audience’s attention. The reason is quite simple actually: we do not ask them. Since our project is at its core an informative web platform, viewers are of high importance for its sustainability. Therefore we conducted a survey through interviews with our first users.
Interviewing Rashed, a Syrian refugee and a potential user of RefVoice, was extremely enlightening. In the link down below you can find the whole interview in Greek. We will have it soon translated into English.
Interview in English:
The challenges of the course Social issues and social innovations may end by this semester, but RefVoice started a long time ago and will continue to evolve and be active. We have many ideas and goals for the next period of our project and we are already planning our next steps.
Our Medium Publication:
Our official page:
Our Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/RefVoice/?fref=ts
Team members: Mary Bouli, Maria Vasilakou, Stavroula Pollatou
