Enhancing Good Practice Documentation with Digital Storytelling: A Reference Manual for Empowering Community-based Organisations and Communities around HIV and Gender

This reference manual, which was developed jointly by SAfAIDS and Women'sNet, with support from Oxfam Canada, is designed to provide a step-by-step guide on using digital storytelling - which combines audio and visual images with a script or story - to document and communicate good practices.
As stated in this manual, "the documentation of good practices is a critical process for stimulating learning and innovation in development programmes. Good practice documents are unique materials that describe, in detail, a programme, or elements of a programme (i.e. a specific project or activity), that have contributed towards making interventions effective and successful and which have been measured against specific criteria. Ideally, they provide a benchmark against which other programmes can measure themselves and successes they can aim towards." The manual seeks to guide the staff of development or other organisations to encourage colleagues (those overseeing a project) or community members (the beneficiaries of a project) to share their personal stories around process and impact.
The manual is intended for programme officers, project leaders, and writer/researchers who are taking, or have taken, a course with SAfAIDS or Women'sNet on integrating digital storytelling with good practice documentation. Although it focuses on using the techniques to highlight interventions that advocate for HIV and AIDS, women's rights, gender equality, and sexual diversity programmes, the techniques discussed can be readily adapted for use on a variety of development issues.
The manual has the following sections:

• Background: Good Practice Documentation and the Power of Stories
• 1. Introduction: Good Practice Documentation and Digital Storytelling
• 2. Application: A Gender-Sensitive Approach to Documentation – Using ICTs [information and communication technologies] and Digital Storytelling
• 3. Integration: Using Digital Storytelling as a Tool in Good Practice Documentation
• 4. The Digital Storytelling Process: Holding a Write-shop
• 5. References