Afghan Youth Voices Festival

In October 2010, this initiative kicked off with a week-long event in Kabul featuring the talents of young Afghan photographers, filmmakers, artists, and musicians. Prior to this festival, activities included training, equipment access, and networking opportunities; more than 1,500 young people representing 16 out of 34 provinces participated. The Afghan Youth Voices website captures the work of these young Afghans in photography workshops, radio stations, multimedia centres, and more. For instance, visitors to the site may view youth-produced videos that document different ways in which Afghan youth are reaching out to others: whether training them in new skills, expressing their thoughts and wishes, or exposing issues that concern them. One video shows Afghan Youth Voices Festival participants Safitullah and Safiqullah documenting the lives of child labourers in a brick kiln in Jalalabad.

Other youth initiatives and resources available on the Afghan Youth Voices Festival website include:

• Online training resources such as: a guide for shooting, editing, and publishing online video; an online video tutorial on how to use VideoPad; a guide to digital storytelling that can be adapted into classrooms; and a practical resource on how to gather audio.
• A women's blogging project, which will begin with the training of 12 young women bloggers in Kabul, and replicated in Herat, Jalalabad, and in areas where Internews is establishing multi-media production centres.
• The Afghan memory project, whereby youth are invited to contribute photographs from family archives to create a pictorial history of Afghanistan.
• Details about workshops, such as one held in July 2011: Afghan Youth Voices Festival and the Aschiana Foundation collaborated to run a 3-day workshop designed to be both educational and fun. Approximately 20 students participated in the project to learn graffiti art, skateboarding, and photography. Also explored on the website is "Treasures of Afghanistan", designed to teach young people how to photograph the natural beauty and the rich cultural heritage of their surroundings. The first such workshop was held in two schools in Panjshir province; the students learned the basic principles of photography and then took numerous photographs of their villages and surroundings which will then be a part of a national photo series.
• Access to further connections to Afghan Youth Voices Festival via Facebook and YouTube.

The strategy of awards and recognition is also part of Afghan Youth Voices Festival work. In 2010, Afghan Youth Voices Festival ran two poetry competitions in Nangarhar and Balkh province; each event was attended by hundreds of young people. The theme of the competition was "hope". The winners of the regional poetry competition then competed in a national poetry competition, held in September. They then had their poems published in an anthology.

Youth.