Animating Communities and Brining Learning to Life- The Multi-Award winning MARVIN System, DHCS and the MARVIN Consortium

Easterby-Wood J¹*, Jones J¹*

1. NT Department of Health and Community Services, Casuarina, Northern Territory, Australia

Marvin is the innovative community engagement Information, Communication Technology system developed by the NT Department of Health & Community Services to enable communities to design develop and produce text, graphic and multimedia based community health education and policy resources that are language, culture, people and community specific. These resources, which feature Community members transformed into animated characters, are built with the community, by the community and for the community within only a few hours of training and by those with little or now previous experience with technology. The resources are relevant, flexible adaptable and are able to be produced in hours instead of months and at a fraction of the cost of existing resource development tools.

The MARVIN System has in the past year received over 12 State, national and International awards and has become the fastest growing community specific engagement tool in the Southern Hemisphere. Countries and organisations around the world including AUSAID and UNICEF are currently pursuing or engaged in utilising the MARVIN System for policy development, community education (AIDS/STD awareness campaigns), service delivery and citizen engagement.

The MARVIN system represents Australian innovation at its best and is a unique blending of technology and humanity that denotes its development in partnership with the Indigenous Communities of Central Australia in some of the most remote localities in the world.

The presentation will consist of an interactive journey through MARVIN featuring many of the Aboriginal Health workers and Community members who helped in the design and development of the system and the presenters and in order to keep things interesting the presenters will be selecting members of the audience to become animated characters that will become part of the presentation talking in languages from around the world.

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