Thoughts on the CMP project - Daniel Charvat

In trying to collect feedback from the community in response to our media outputs, I visited our wards with six of my group members. Together we walked through the streets, primarily focussing on areas in which we stuck up our wall posters. These areas consisted largely of spaza shops and spaces in which community members gather informally.

We asked many bystanders to give us their thoughts and opinions about the wall post to try and gain an understanding of our impact in the community. There was a general feeling of agreement that the posters were good, but nothing overly positive came up.

I thought that instead of asking random bystanders, I should head through to see the man I interviewed, and whose story appears on the wall poster, to get his opinion. After walking about 500m up the dusty roads, I found his home. In his useful jovial manner he invited me in and we got to talking.

He told me that over the past week he has been flooded with work, with many people from all over the wards recognizing his face on the wallposters he said that five cars had already visited him that day alone. It was refreshing to get some genuinely enthusiastic praise regarding our project. He was even cheerful (maybe that's not quite the word) about his TV 'test' box being broken, since with all the new business he was sure he afford to get a new one. After our encounter I headed home and thought back on his responses.

Even if our project was not overly successful in raising awareness and solving the problems found within the location, the fact that we made a difference - even if it was just for this one man - validated the project for me.