Printing of Dinka Youth Hymnals & recordings on DAPs

Transcription

1 Across International Office Yei Office Karen, Ndege Road 70 Mission Road P.O. Box C/o P.O. Box Ngong Road Juba, South Sudan Nairobi, Kenya Tel: (+254) /7 Tel: Wireless: (+254) Tel: Office Cell phone: (+254) Website: 18 th August 2014 Final Report of HFB funded Dinka Youth Hymnal Project Printing of Dinka Youth Hymnals & recordings on DAPs Objective: To print 2000 Dinka youth hymnals and distribute together with digital players with tunes. Achievement 1770 of the books were printed and 722 have been supplied to the Dinka Youth group, Jol Wo Lieech, for distribution. The balance is currently held in the Across store as the youth have no safe place to store them while distribution is in progress. Jol Wo Lieech members have supplied copies to the following centres: In South Sudan: Guolyar & Bor (80), Juba (200), Nimule (120), Yei (151), Kaya (80), Maridi (51) and Yambio (50). In NW Uganda: Koboko (30) this being 20kms from the S. Sudan border where many Dinka people from S. Sudan have settled. In early 2012, forty peace songs from the book were recorded while it was in its first draft. The recordings were added to 98 Digital Audio players supplied to Dinka cattle camps in Bor and Twic East counties in Jonglei state. The response was positive and children learned a good number so that our staff member was often greeted by children singing them when he returned to the camps. A further 120 songs from the book were recorded in late 2013 / early 2014 and linked to their numbers in the final edition of book. Then they were loaded on to 25 mobile phone memory chips and are being distributed with the books to assist in learning the hymns. An element of this project has been to build book production skills and capacity in South Sudan. Wycliffe/SIL in Juba are now coming to us for printing their literacy and Scripture books. Future plans Some of the 1770 books on display The cartons behind contain many others. The Jol Wo Lieech will continue to progressively distribute the books. They intend to get them to the following centres as opportunity permits: (1) In South Sudan: Yirol, Rumbek, Wau, Twic East. (2) In Uganda where many Dinka people live in refuge: Kampala, Arua, Nyumbazi (a refugee settlement near Adjumani). Funds contributed by the recipients will be used to reprint more copies. It is hoped that the very large Dinka community will progressively receive many more books through these cycles. 1

2 Recently Across has received a large consignment of DAPs donated for Christian work. We plan to use some in Dinka cattle camps and with internally displaced people groups affected by the recent civil war. Many Dinka songs recorded in this project will be added to encourage Christian peace building and trauma healing. Later, this could be scaled up to reach perhaps half a million people. Dinka Youth learning songs from the new book Challenges and adjustments Several adjustments were made which both delayed the project and increased its cost. Dinka youth living as refugees in Kenya independently developed a hymnal. This led to disagreements. Eventually some of the their hymns were included in the South Sudan version. The reorganisation, extra proof reading and review workshops, added about a year to the project. The project budget was based on a book of design and estimated size in the mid 200s of pages. This was not accepted by the reviewers who felt older readers needed bigger print. The final book had 384 pages. This reduced the print run. Hence 1770 instead of 2000 were completed. While the initial 40 hymns were well recorded, a technical fault was overlooked when the Jol Wo Lieech assisted with the next 100 recordings. Their recordings do not play well on DAPs but work well on chips for mobile phones. Since many Dinka youth have mobile phones, a switch over to supplying on memory chips has been implemented. Meanwhile, Across had already used the well recorded versions on 98 DAPs so in some ways we went beyond the original plan for distributing on 50 DAPs. We have plans to scale this up substantially as per the last future plan above. Finally Though the Jol Wo Lieech will continue to distribute the books and songs on memory chips over coming months, Across has completed its assignment to develop and reproduce the printed and oral materials. We will continue to use the fruits of this project on on many new DAPs going to Dinka communities. We sincerely thank HFB for backing this project and look forward to working together on further projects. Report prepared by Rhys Hall Radio Manager, Across, Yei hal.rr@gmail.com mob: / th August

3 Map of South Sudan and Uganda showing recent and planned distribution of Dinka Youth Hymnals by Dinka Youth called Jol Wo Lieech Wau Rumbek Yirol Guolyar Twic East Bor Yambio Maridi Juba Yei Kaya Nimule Arua Nyumbazi Kampala Kaya Purple names already supplied Kampala Blue names supply planned The next pages show a pictorial review of the book development, oral recording of songs, and their use on DAPs in cattle camps (bringing together pictures from earlier reports) 3

4 Appendix 1. Dinka Song book production and peace building project for Dinka cattlecamps The challenge: Youth/young adults in cattlecamps have been the cause of many conflicts The Response: Christian youth in Yei have a vision to send peace-building messages on portable digital audio players to the camps. Included will be peace-building selections from a new Dinka song book Dinka song book under development in Yei , by youth The first sample is put together in early Youth trained in Dinka typesetting 2012: Bishop Ruben Akurdid of Episcopal Church Bor Diocese gives full support to the song book and digital player project to reach cattlecamps and urges all speed due to conflicts in the Bor area.

5 Appendix 2 Photos of Dinka songs being recorded th February

6 Appendix 3. Scenes from Dinka Bor cattlecamps during DAP distribution 2012 The average camp numbered 380 people. Sample DAPs were received Youth and young men will be the target. Messages for women encourage peace pressure groups Children like those pictured at left, learned many Dinka songs from the DAPs 6

7 Appendix 4. Scenes from the final edition hymnal in-house production processes, Jan 2014 Risograph printing Collating signatures of 32 pages in the new binding room Checking before sewing Collated Signatures Folding Sewing signatures Trimming threads Pressing signatures 7