Over a year ago, my Peace Corps colleagues and myself decided to write a telenovela (or Latina style soap opera) to an already existing health initiative called "Escojo Mi Vida," or "I choose my life.". Escojo was started years ago by volunteers to teach Dominican youth about making healthy choices about sex, relationships, drugs, alcohol (etc.). Our idea was to write a 10 episode telenovela that would correlate directly with 10 lessons in the Escojo manual. This way Escojo groups all over the country could watch one episode every time they got together and discuss "real-life" situations as related to the telenovela characters.
This past week, myself and 11 other PC volunteers got together in Janico (fellow PCV Jean's site) to actualize the first episode of our series. With the help of a Peace Corps grant Jean and Amanda applied for for US $500, we filmed the first episode and 30 short scenes for a trailer for the whole series.
We worked with youth from Janico, and they did AMAZING. The worked hard, often shooting a scene up to 10 times. They were patient with us, as we spoke English, Spanish, Spanglish to try to figure out the best way to accomplish our goals. It makes me very excited to continue working with them and see how they grow during this process.
Tomorrow, all 12 of us have to go into the capital for a mandatory meeting with our Peace Corps country director and other potential Dominican sponsors. Rumor has it, if they like what we present, there is a chance our budget could increase to between US $25,000 - $30,000, with the 10 episodes showing on National television.
Here is the link to a teaser of the whole series (not the trailer, just a teaser) of what we did last week in Janico. Wish us luck for success and the time to make this project actually happen!
http://vimeo.com/14131319
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