I steal a glance behind me to see what the turnout\u2019s like… everyone\u2019s here.<\/p>\n
The older men sit off to the east, older women to the west, young guys\/girls in the middle, half the children have their jaws agape, the other half kicking up a sand\/dust cloud by dancing furiously in the light of our makeshift movie screen. All are wondering the same thing – \u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I kill the music, and the children plop down in the cool sand.<\/p>\n Complete, expectant silence.<\/p>\n All eyes are on Thomas, former shark fishermen turned conservationist and PADI divemaster, microphone in hand, standing in the glare of the projector which now constitutes the only man-made source of light in a 20 km radius.<\/p>\n Forget about researching daily routines to find the appropriate \u201caperture\u201d for our messages of community-based resource management: we\u2019ve just created our own!<\/p>\n A natural performer, Thomas is in his element, not missing a beat. He dives into an explanation of the fishery monitoring we\u2019ve been conducting in this village; Why do we do it? What do we hope to learn? How can it help us manage our resources? All in the rapid-fire guttural hiccup of the Vezo dialect, which, to the untrained ear, can be mistaken for a heated verbal confrontation.<\/p>\n Rewind a couple of months to a picture of a dejected me, half-heartedly poking at a plate of rice and boiled fish in this same village. We had just held a meeting in the village\u2019s primary school. Twenty sets of glazed over eyes, slightly annoyed as our meeting had roused them from their afternoon naps. We fruitlessly tried to explain our work with scribbles on a chalkboard and pictures in the sand. Nothing is sinking in, nothing will be taken home. A mere 150 km south of here, in the villages of Velondriake, we are spearheading internationally acclaimed work in community-based natural resource management, and now we\u2019ve come here to replicate it, but the message is not getting across.<\/p>\n There has to be a better way.<\/p>\n NGO workers like myself tend to romanticise these traditional village meetings – all of the town elders sitting in a circle in the shade of a monstrous tamarind tree, discussing, debating, reflecting – the perfect forum, one would think, for important decision-making and grassroots initiatives. Unfortunately, these traditional village meetings are becoming less important, an unintentional product of the plethora of previous conservation and development projects that have failed to deliver. People are tired…\u00a0Another<\/em> meeting<\/em>? Leave it, probably not important anyway<\/em>.<\/p>\n Our presentation of fisheries monitoring is over, and Thomas has settled down into his chair. The voice of independent filmmaker Jon Slayer drifts over the still captive audience, peppered with Thomas\u2019 Vezo interpretation, as this tiny village in western Madagascar stares at larger than life images of massive shoals of sweetlips, a two-meter long guitarfish, and various other scenes of aquatic life, all shot on location in and around Andavadoaka in the Western Indian Ocean\u2019s largest locally managed marine area. The audience\u2019s silence is broken occasionally with gasps of excitement, the screaming out of names of familiar fish, and the \u201cah-ha\u2019s!\u201d of gaps in traditional ecological knowledge being filled in by the wonders of western videography.<\/p>\n It\u2019s now been two hours that we\u2019ve had the undivided attention of this entire village. \u00a0Think of the potential. Why explain the science that tells us that marine reserves probably<\/em> fill up with fish in a few years when we can show<\/em> real footage of the massive schools of surgeonfish in the two year old permanent reserve near Andavadoaka. Instead of telling<\/em> the story of how villagers in Velondriake have taken the lead in managing their resources, we can show<\/em> interviews with actual members of the Velondriake community, describing their experiences.<\/p>\n Regardless of the subject, most importantly we\u2019ve learned that with a couple of speakers, a big white sail and two litres of petrol, we can deliver our messages in a way that people will actually pay attention to. The possibilities are endless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Brian Jones, Conservation Project Coordinator, Belo sur mer, Madagascar In social marketing terminology it\u2019s referred to as an \u201caperture\u201d – a point in time when you have your target audience\u2019s undivided attention, and your message will be most effective, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":28415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belo-sur-mer-madagascar"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Thomas](\"http:\/\/blog.blueventures.org\/media\/2014\/03\/Thomas-presenting-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n