Photovoice and participatory video is a visual method whereby the participants produce their own audio-visual soundbites, and the storytelling resides with the community themselves. Through this British Council-supported collaboration, we assisted the participants in putting forward their stories based on the photos and videos they sent throughout the project.
Below is some background to the participant's daily life, translated by Khin Lin Naing (2023) with minor edits by Dr Britta Boyer.
Photovoice participant: Ma Aye
Ma Aye lives in Nyaung Shwe Township with her family. She has 4 family members; a son, daughter, husband and father-in-law.
Ma Aye is 36 years old and started weaving at the age of 13 years old; she has 23 years of weaving experience. She weaves traditional Inle Longyies with her own two looms at home. Before being married, she worked in the Aung Sakkyar Lotus Robe weaving business; she is a skilled and fast weaver and can weave 1 longyi in about 2 days. Her husband owns two boats and has a service to hire the boat to customers; he drives the boat.
Ma Aye also works cooking, washing and gardening; she has a nice small garden and they eat their own vegetables and fruits from the garden and sell some extra. Sometimes they bring a natural fertilizer from Inle Lake to put in their garden. They love their plants and gardening very much.
Photovoice: Ma Aye
Photovoice: Ma Aye
They like to watch TV together at night about 2 hours, they don't use social media (facebook,viber, others) and their lifestyle is very simple.
They were interested to participate and the photos were shared their photos over a secure communication platform. The names have been changed for safety.