Culture Fund partners with UNDP to create Dialogue platforms

Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust,
07 January 2013, Zimbabwe

My Zimbabwe Story campaign is an initiative set to create an interactive platform for creation, presentation and dialoguing aimed at improving international perceptions of Zimbabwe. It proposes to use multimedia avenues to relay positive messages of Zimbabwe. With a population of over 12 million and with each Zimbabwean and friends to the country yearning to tell their own Zimbabwe story, the platform seeks to provide insight into previously untold experiences and aspirations.

An initial multi-stakeholder dialogue seminar was hosted in Harare, bringing in a small group of creative people from; arts sector, policy makers, civil society, media, business, and international community resident in Zimbabwe among others, to brainstorm on how to collaborate with the media for the My Zimbabwe Story campaign scheduled for 2013.

The overall aim of the dialogue seminar was to construct a series of activities that would allow organizers and participants to observe and explore these complex and essential notions to the overall purpose of “improving the local & international images of Zimbabwe”. In implementing the campaign, the arts and culture sector will forge smart partnerships with other spheres in society, especially the media, to create a dialogue platform where ordinary and passionate Zimbabweans and residents share their experiences, lessons learnt and positives aspirations about their imagined futures hence helping improve the international perceptions of Zimbabwe.

The outcomes of the seminar will feed into the next phase of the campaign that seeks to achieve the following outcomes;

  •  increased self-confidence of Zimbabweans
  • use of multi-media platforms as dissemination and dialoguing tools by ordinary Zimbabwe, some of whom may later engage in citizen journalism
  •  improved international perceptions of Zimbabwe
  • increased investment opportunities for Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans
  • new avenues of dialogue between Zimbabwe and the international community such as international cultural diplomacy

The project is a partnership between Culture Fund and the United Nations Development Programme, Dialogue Facility Fund.  The facilitation of dialogue is recognized as one of the three main priority areas in the UNDP Zimbabwe’s Country Programme and Action Plan, as well as the ZUNDAF. The Dialogue Financing Facility [DFF] established in 2004 is a flexible fund to promote dialogue initiatives among Zimbabweans with an objective to support the transition process and the development of Zimbabwe while strengthening the existing local community systems to enhance dialogue.


 

http://www.culturefund.org.zw/index.php/2011-12-14-07-07-05/artist-focus/219-culture-fund-partners-with-undp-to-create-dialogue-platforms