Cultural Preservation
Cultural preservation celebrates and records the heritage of a people. This can be accomplished by collecting photographs, cultural stories, family genealogy, or by learning and teaching traditional songs, stories and dance to new generations. Below you’ll find various tools to preserve family histories for children whose parents are taken by disease and to record those cultural beliefs eroding away through inundation of western civilization.
Village Volunteers is committed to the conscientious use of resources.
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- Ethnography
Learn about ethnography, a qualitative methodology whereby the researcher seeks to understand a culture from the standpoint of a cultural insider, learning what it is truly like to exist within a particular framework of ideas, customs, taboos, religion, thoughts, and all of the institutions that come together to make culture. - Ethnographic Research Strategy
To undertake an ethnographic investigation, equipment as simple as a pad and pencil can be used, or as complex as digital cameras and special effects. Whatever you choose, learn what guidelines to keep in mind when in the field. - Memory Box
In Kenya alone, 890,000 children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS. Memory Boxes are physical objects created by families with the assistance of a volunteer, in which they store family memories in the form of letters, photographs, stories, advisement and objects that have significance for a family and its history. These have proven instrumental in assisting grieving orphans by preserving memories and offering hope for the future. - Memory Box Interview: Suggested Questions
These questions may be useful in preserving a family’s Memory Box history for those children who have parents with HIV/AIDS. - Traditional Healers: Working and Learning
The spiritual and medicinal healing arts of the traditional societies in Kenya provide remedies for common ailments and also demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the environment, concern for conservation, and the sustainable use of medicinal plants. Learn to preserve the great store of indigenous knowledge held by traditional healers which is in danger of extinction with the current generation.