Members of the CVM, with Shannon Walsh, Nancy Lesko, Jackie Simmons and the Sekwanele Youth Organization, conducted two one-day videomaking workshops in March and April in Kuhlekonke and Gobindlovu Schools in the Vulindlela region of KZN. Participants included learners, teachers, parents and community health care workers. Themes explored included gender violence, rape, poverty, and HIV/AIDS. Each workshop consisted of 30-35 participants, none of whom had ever worked with video before.

Groups of learners, groups of teachers, and groups of community health care workers and parents were offered the simple prompt: 'what are some of the issues that are important in your lives?' In small groups of 5-6, participants identified many critical issues ranging from teen pregnancy to gangs, violence, rape and poverty. Several of the youth groups consisted of 'boys only' or 'girls only' although in both schools there was also one mixed-sex grouping.

Amongst one group of girls, the very first issue that was raised in their brainstorming session was "I am worried that I will get pregnant before I finish school". Group members had a chance to vote independently on the topics that they thought were the most salient. Significantly, five out of six of the groups of young people across the two schools chose to document the issue of gender violence, represented through such titles as "Rape at School: Trust No One", "Rape", "Raping and HIV/AIDS" and "Stop Abuse".

The students’ diverse treatment of issues of gender violence demonstrates the multi-faceted and seemingly all-pervasive nature of gender violence – at home in "Stop sexual abuse" (where a father rapes his daughter), at school in "Trust No One"(where a male teacher rapes a female student), and by a gang in "Rape" (where a girl is raped four times).

Participants were given several hours to film their stories in and around the schools. At the end of the day, the resulting videos were screened for all participants to see, allowing them to explore and debrief the issues raised by the project in a community setting. During follow-up workshops at Kuhlekonke and Gobindlovu schools, the original participants of each workshop viewed and critiqued the rough cuts of the resulting documentary films, respectively entitled Seeing for Ourselves/Asizibonele Ngokwethu and Our Stories/Izindaba Zethu.