UBELONG Cusco Research Expedition: Intro

UBELONG co-founders and Expedition Leaders Cedric Hodgeman and Raul Roman led ten highly-qualified professionals through a rigorous research journey to understand the impact of international volunteers in the most popular volunteer destination in Latin America. Most of the footage from the field was taken by Raul Roman on a handheld video cam.

The team’s work was rooted in rigorous social science methods. The research design incorporated a variety of qualitative data collection tools, including structured and unstructured interviews and participant observation. With the support of Quimera, the team also used video ethnography to better understand stakeholder motivations, attitudes, perceptions and behaviors.

In addition to preparing UBELONG and the expedition team to use video in their research process Quimera worked with UBELONG to develop a “video report”, parallel in structure to the text-based report, documenting the research expedition as well as presenting key findings.

The video report, entitled “People to People” is divided into five chapters, this being the first.

UBELONG Cusco Research Expedition: Volunteering Environment

Chapter 2 of UBELONG’s video report “People to People”.

UBELONG Cusco Research Expedition: Impact of Volunteering on Communities

Chapter 3 of UBELONG’s video report “People to People”.

UBELONG Cusco Research Expedition: Impact on Volunteers

Chapter 4 of UBELONG’s video report “People to People”.

UBELONG Research Expedition to Cusco: Final Thoughts

Chapter 5 of UBELONG’s video report “People to People”.

Beneficiary Accountability

This is a section from an M&E pilot we did with Red Cross Tsunami Recovery Program in southern Thailand. One of the purposes of the pilot was to deploy, explore and refine methods for integrating video and participatory-video into a monitoring and evaluation process, including beneficiaries as partners in the process.

Red Cross and I were selected to present the piece at the 2010 Chicago Ethnography Conference, Ethnography Going Public.

I was later invited by American Red Cross International Services onto one of their panels at the 2011 World Conference on Humanitarian Studies, Innovations Track, focusing on evidence-based program design. Someone at the Conference later blogged about the presentation and the potential for participatory video in disaster risk reduction.

Stakeholder Inclusion

Participants speak to the importance of youth participation in the design, management, implementation and evaluation of youth-focused programs. This clip comes from the UNFPA African Youth Alliance M&E Video Report. Filming was done by in-country youth teams. Editing and support provided by Quimera.

United Nations Population Fund

Discusses video as a tool in African Youth Alliance Monitoring and Evaluation Report.

Field footage produced by in-country youth teams, web-based support and editing by Quimera.

Arthur Andersen

While piloting participatory video methodologies the video documents organizational change at a professional services firm one year after move-in to a radically different environment.

All footage captured by the employees of the firm.