My SJRK memories

I joined the IDRC in July of 2017, shortly after the start of the SJRK project. I've been the primary developer of the Storytelling Tool in collaboration with at least a half-dozen other developers and designers. The evolution of the tool over the last two and a bit years has given me a greater appreciation for the challenges of designing and developing a web app that was as inclusive and accessible as possible, both in terms of its use and also its creation.

Part of this creation was in fact co-creation and co-design along with the various SJRK partners around the globe. I learned about the invaluable benefit of gathering a diversity of perspectives and experiences, and that no one designer or developer could possibly know what will work best for every user. I heard about students in Rwanda with learning differences; a group youth movement in Colombia that taught others to care for their local environment; another group in Colombia developing a wide area network where there was little to no connectivity to the broader internet; setting up an online high school in Mexico for students who would otherwise not be able to attend; a team teaching youth in Canada's North how to use video cameras and drones to share their experiences.

Learning about all the amazing projects being supported was awe-inspiring. When I began to work on the Storytelling Tool, I had an abstract sense of what it would be used for, though I didn't know at that point the full breadth of work being done by the partner organizations. To find out that we were in the company of groups working so hard to improve the lives and access to education for young people was so inspiring, and gave me motivation to do my best in working on tool.

A simple web interface with no decorative elements consisting of a form with various fields. The fields include: "story title", "your name", a text input area, a drop-down list to indicate the language of the story and a text box to enter the language, and finally a button that says "Done"

There were times where I would get so deep into the weeds of the code that I lost sight of the end goal of creating a free, open-source, cheap to deploy content authoring tool. At these times, I found it incredibly motivating to remember who was going to be using the tool and the personal stories that we wanted people to be able to share with it.

The development continues, and hopefully some day we will get some outside contributors who can carry on the work and help the tool grow to something more than we could ever imagine.