How We Work: A Child's Perspective

A little girl lives in a village in Bali in Indonesia. There is a high earthquake risk where she lives; she's felt lots of tremors in her nine years. At school they practice drills, so that if a major earthquake hits while they’re in class, they have a procedure to follow.

When she watches our film Earthquake, the little girl finds quite a lot of additional information there that she was unsure of. For example, she makes up her mind to get her parents to pack an emergency bag to keep by the door, so if there ever was a disaster, they’d be able to grab it, get to safety and have a supply of essentials to keep them going until it’s safe to return home.

The Little Girl puppet in the film wears a similar uniform, and is up to speed on all the latest safety and preparedness advice. Trocaire, No Strings’ main partner in the Tales of Disasters series, asked that this character should be female in order to help give girls a sense of empowerment and a feeling that they can make decisions and take control just like a boy might, should the situation demand it.

Trocaire carries out its development work through local expert in-country organisations. Its Jakarta office puts No Strings together with two of their main partners there, IDEP and JRS (Jesuit Refugee Service). IDEP, who have developed their own series of community-based disaster management comic books and materials, outlines the main learning points to be covered by the natural disaster films. JRS provides background and guidance for the Two Gardens peace-building film. While parts of the region are affected by ethnic tensions, the film is also seen as important for regions threatened by natural disasters, and on the back of them, the possibility of widespread movements of peoples and consequent problems therein.

Originally, Kathy Mullen and her team in New York toy with the idea of a film using a family of orangutan characters. The reaction from IDEP and JRS – too specific to particular regions. Other animals are listed along with their cultural significance, but eventually, the concept seems to work best using ordinary villager characters and a red squirrel, a familiar creature in much of the South East Asian region.

With the concepts written, the messages incorporated and the scripts then approved, Michael Frith draws the puppet characters and the set and props, all of which need signing off by IDEP and JRS. The clothes have to be right, the headwear – Muslim and non Muslim, the hair, the kind of tools people work the land with, and on and on. Kathy and her long-standing colleague Heather Asch, puppeteer, puppet builder and No Strings executive producer, then assemble a crew of some of the leading names in the puppet industry to get everything made, and then perform and film the shoot. Budgets are tight, people have to double up in skill areas, but everything is beautifully and lovingly put together, all hand made with not the slightest detail overlooked.

In Bali, the little girl and her school friends watch Earthquake in Bahasa Indonesian. There’s no reason for her to think the film wasn’t made there – if it was more efficient to film it there with the same level of experience behind it, it would have been. The films are also dubbed into Acehnese and Timorese at the same Jakarta studio.

Because their region is also prone to flooding, the class next watches Flood & Landslide. Just beforehand, the two facilitator teachers who are visiting that morning from IDEP ask them lots of questions to find out what they already know. It’s fun, because they use hand puppets which make all the children laugh. There are games related to the film that they play afterwards, like one where they form teams and race to unjumble the names of items an emergency bag should contain. Then they sit down in groups and draw an emergency map, based on their school and surrounding homes, to show where they would go to meet their families following an emergency, where the higher land is in the area, and other important details, activities all explored during the No Strings puppet training and facilitator workshop which IDEP, JRS and partners took part in.

Did the little girl enjoy the films? YES!! Will she tell her family and friends what she learnt? YES!! Will she remain safe? We don’t know.  We do know that she is now equipped with very important preparedness and safety information, and after watching the films, she has strong references based on what various characters did right and wrong to guide her own future decision-making should she find herself in a disaster situation where she needs to think fast. We certainly hope she’ll be safe. 

While the process differs slightly from programme to programme, the basic strategy outlined here is the same wherever No Strings works, as you'll see as you look round this site.

From Top: Little Girl and Squirrel puppet characters from Tales of Disaters natural disasters preparedness and safety films; Class at work in Bali, Indonesia; Leading puppeteer Heather Asch on the Tales of Disasters set