Empowering children through Hero Books

The latest in a series of vignettes by students documenting the work of BvLF partners as part of the Hine Fellowships project, a collaboration between BvLF and the Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative. Maital Guttman is working with the 10 million memory project.

Please note that reports from Hine Fellows published on this website constitute their own personal impressions and in no way represent the official positions of their host organisation, the Bernard van Leer Foundation or the Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative.

Hero Books are a way to provide psychosocial support to children who have faced painful and traumatic life experiences. The 10 million memory project aims to bring this technique to 10 million African children affected by HIV/AIDS.

Hero Booking is a process through which a child becomes the author, narrator, and illustrator of her own life. Through guided group sessions led by a trained facilitator, who could be a child who has already done her own hero book, children create chapters of their lives - including family and community, and a monster that often gets the better of them.

At the end of the book, the child emerges as the hero that overcomes the monster. The process helps children develop tricks and tactics that allow them to face problems in the future.

The Hero Book, developed by Jonathan Morgan of the 10 Million Memory Project, is based on Michael White's narrative therapy methods, in which the child externalizes her issue. In essence, the child becomes empowered to see that she is not the problem, but that the problem is the problem.

After using Hero Books with several hundred children, Jonathan decided to launch the "One Child, One Hero Book" campaign at the 2006 XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto. Together, he and I are developing a film that will explain how to use Hero Booking effectively. The hope is that this film will be able to help 10 million children see themselves as heroes.

Thus far, while in South Africa, I have filmed several hero booking processes:

• social workers receiving training to use hero books with their families;
• a graduate level social work class of about 150 students, taught by Jonathan, who will use hero books during their internships;and
• some of the original authors of Hero Books, children who are part of MadAboutArt, a community center in the township Nekkies that uses art to educate children about HIV and then uses the art to spread this message to other children around the world.

  The high school students at MadAboutArt especially demonstrated how the process can be empowering. As soon as they saw my camera, they asked that I teach them video skills, and started creating their own film with a videocamera that had been donated to them.

  Approximately 12.3 million African children have been orphaned by AIDS. This number is estimated to double by 2010, and doesn't include children affected by HIV/AIDS in ways other than orphaning. After spending a month working with children in a township of South Africa, I would be hard pressed to name one child who is not affected by HIV, whether from a parent, relative, friend, teacher, or the broader toll the virus has taken on their society.

  Documentation work in these circumstances is difficult. When my friend's sister was in the hospital dying of AIDS, how could I ask, "Excuse me, can I film your sister dying?" These are questions I never learned how to ask at school. Nor did I learn how to respond when, for instance, my friend told me that all of her siblings, except for herself and the sister who was now dying, have died.

  What has impressed me the most in my time here is how impersonal numbers like 12.3 million become represented by one friend, one family, one community. As a documentarian, I hope to convey how HIV is affecting my new friends' lives, and also how they are becoming empowered in spite of it - the despair they face, but also the moments of hope. Their hero books have helped me to see both.