Mental Health during Lockdown - South Africa
During the COVID-19 lockdown, in South Africa, mental health became of serious importance. Many parents of children were too busy to read bedtime stories to their children. I became aware of the issue when my younger cousin mentioned she wanted to hear another voice read her bedtime story. I set out to create a video series of bed time stories which parents or children could play on demand.
In order to keep the children entertained during lockdown, I organized a team of Scouts to create videos in which they read stories (in two different languages) which would be uploaded to YouTube as well as burned onto CDs and distributed in Cosmo, an underprivileged settlement near Johannesburg. Since these were being published on the public domain, I had to do some research on the laws surrounding copyright. I ended up having to use public domain stories. This meant using Æsop's fables.
The YouTube channel didn't get many views at first. Some of the videos read in Afrikaans did really well, with one video getting nearly 1800 views. Altogether the channel accumulated over 4200 views.
In order to make the project better, I would see if there are other stories that I could acquire. This could be done by speaking with publisher's and seeing if I could get permission to use certain stories and/or images. Furthermore, I could try to increase the public visibility in order to spread awareness and thus make people more aware of the YouTube Channel.
