The Digital Hero Book Project puts youth safety first. The goal of hero booking is for the participants to develop self-esteem, future-focus and communication skills. Therefore the emphasis on safety is not because this is a dangerous exercise, but because we value safety so much. At the end of the hero booking exercise each person has a hand-bound or digital storybook of their own making, that is a kind of solution-focused mission statement, but that also documents, heralds and reinforces their problem-busting strategies and their hero-survival-resilient abilities.
The process of making a hero book follows principles of consent and confidentiality. Because of the potentially sensitive nature of the stories, which can explore a young persons emotional, behavioral, social or political problems, each person makes a choice around the preferred balance of working alone, sharing in pairs, group sharing and eventually, sharing outside of the group, none of which are obligatory. To this end we ask the participating youths to sign forms to indicate that they understand and respect the privacy of the other participants as well as give their consent to sharing their stories only as it suits them.
A teacher or facilitator is always present to guide the youngsters through the hero booking process. They work through a manual written by psychologist Jonathan Morgan of REPSSI. REPSSI, the non-profit psychosocial support organization in South Africa that promotes hero booking has a number of internal as well as independent review mechanisms of its activities to ensure that its approaches – such as hero booking – “at least do no harm and at best promote and support the psychosocial well-being of children.” The hero book process has been tried and tested in the field and undergone refinements since it was first developed four years ago.
Hero booking has always happened in closed group situations, complimented by an opportunity at the end to share the stories to a public audience, e.g. in South Africa collections of hero stories have been published as books and placed in local libraries. In these cases the authors have the opportunity and are helped to change identifying information.
The Digital Hero Book model is slightly different in that the group now extends into a virtual space made up of a few physically located groups of youth simultaneously working on their hero books and choosing to publish certain aspects of this online. In our pilot project the group comprises teachers and students from Prospect Sierra Middle School (USA), Naz Foundation Care Home (India) and a number of schools in South Africa.
We have partnered with the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) on this project. Launched in 1988, iEARN is the world’s largest network of primary and secondary schools and youth organizations using technology to engage in collaborative educational projects. iEARN-USA was selected by the US Department of Education to create the “Teachers’ Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet” and has won numerous awards because of its proven classroom credibility. It has created a safe and secure space online for its projects, as follows:
- Online forums, like bulletin boards, are used for collaboration. The system is password protected. Once logged in, everyone participating in the project can see everything that the other participants are saying to each other. This transparency makes the users entirely accountable for their actions; iEARN has found it to be a powerful safety mechanism.
- iEARN is based on school and teacher membership. Country co-ordinators vet applications as coming from legitimate entities, e.g. schools or non-profit organizations.
- Once vetted, accounts are created for teachers or facilitators so that they can participate in the forums. They then create student accounts. Students cannot and do not create accounts themselves. Teachers control student access and can change passwords or delete accounts at any time.
- Similarly, student information is not available to anyone except their teacher. No one in iEARN, even other teachers, can search for student identity information.
At the end of the process, we will also offer students the opportunity to share their stories publicly on the forthcoming Digital Hero Book site, to serve as inspirational and positive youth stories and raise awareness of issues facing young people today. Again, the stories will be adapted as necessary to protect everyone involved. Streetside Stories in San Francisco has been successfully following this approach for a number of years: private networks to develop the stories with some voluntarily being made public. Our ultimate goal is to build a public online library of positive youth stories that inspire and support others from around the world.
As in the physical world, there is no way to be 100% safe on a project such as this. However, we believe that the offline processes that teachers and students must follow, coupled with the tried-and-tested online platform make digital hero booking as safe and beneficial as it can be.
