Over the course of the semester I have had the opportunity to take part in a Refugee awareness project. The project started off with the goal of interviewing a refugee who settled in RI. My group was paired with Ma Mary, a refugee who fled from Liberia three years ago due to unreasonable living conditions caused by the Liberian civil war. The purpose of our project was to represent Ma Mary’s story and experiences through her own personal viewpoint. The interview process with Ma Mary was fairly simple. When my group and I formulated questions we chose to follow a sequence that would allow us to see the journey she traveled in the order she experienced the hardships. She agreed to answer all of our questions and was very expressive. Henriette, the translator was a key person in helping us understand Ma Mary’s story because of a small language barrier.
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Purpose/ Rhetorical Situation
In making the final production it was crucial for us to keep to a central storyline. After hearing her story and spending some time with Ma Mary my group and I listened to the clips to find a main idea or central topic Ma Mary's journey revolved around. The most challenging part of the entire project was reorganizing and cutting parts of the interview to show the central theme. Therefore, we organized the video in sections to make the storyline flow more cohesively to create one story.
Additionally, we had to remember who our audience was. After showing our first video draft to our peers, my group immediately considered the audience the video was made for. The video was made for the public, meaning people may not have background on the refugee crisis or the Liberian war. Therefore, we included textual slides in the beginning of our slideshow to give some background details to people who are not familiar with the topic.
MA MARY
