Social media platform features alternative grassroots narratives in Southeast Asia

September 2020

UP-CIDS

Lawan

With assistance from RLS Manila, the Program for Alternative Development (AltDev) of the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative Studies (UP CIDS) produced the social media platform, Lawan. Lawan is the vernacular of resistance in much of Southeast Asia, an apt name for a platform created to showcase grassroots narratives in the time of Covid-19 in various audio-visual formats.

Through feature videos and photo exhibits, viewers can get a glimpse of a better post-COVID-19 world that can already be found in the alternative practices of grassroots communities throughout Southeast Asia with solidarity as a key feature – from an urban poor neighborhood supporting their livelihoods to an indigenous community using their own knowledge to usher their community to safety in their ancestral land. Podcasts were also produced to create a space for open discussions and critique on the failings of government response to the pandemic and alternatives to neoliberalism and fascism.

A report that documents what marginalized communities in a select number of Southeast Asian societies are engaging in and how they respond to the pandemic was produced as part of this project. Click here to know more about the report.

Follow Lawan on social media:

 https://www.facebook.com/LawanUPAltDev
 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtk9RAozd9YjB_YS61cBwKA

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