PSYDEH Using Animation as Teaching and Marketing Tool

PSYDEH premieres its first animated lesson as a teaching AND marketing tool for Mexican partners and friends (Spanish) and global audiences (English). 

This lesson, “The life of an indigenous woman creating bottom-up change in Mexico“, is a fictional story told in the 3rd person about an indigenous partner named Maria navigating our novel scalable program model.

As we explain in the animated lesson description on YouTube:

It’s 2015-to-present in rural eastern Hidalgo, Mexico. Life in the mountains continues as it has for hundreds of years; yet, something is afoot. Maria enjoys her tamales, stitches artisanal goods and helps her family with their milpa as she always has. But, she also solves local problems, from the bottom-up, through a novel program linking citizen education, community organizing, and micro-economic projects. Here, we outline the life of an indigenous woman combatting inequality with the Mexican NGO PSYDEH in 2018.

Why an animated lesson, now?

At least 65% of people are visual learners. What we see impacts what we hear (see The McGurk effect). Presentations using visual aids are found to be far more compelling than those without them.  Moreover, as Andrew Stanton says in his powerful TedTalk “The clues to a great story“, “We all love stories. We’re born for them… [They] can cross the barriers of time, past, present, and future, and allow us to experience the similarities between ourselves and others, real and imagined.”

PSYDEH thus increasingly focuses on the narrative as a tool for inspiring action among disparate groups. As Damon Taylor, PSYDEH Senior Advisor, states, “We know that stories bind us, they define who we are and what people think of us. PSYDEH, therefore, needs to expand our visual teaching and marketing tools to include narrative-oriented Animation.“

Our first animated lesson is directed by art student Olivia Taylor, a 3rd-year student at the Savannah College of Art and Design in the USA majoring in animation (See this video interview with Olivia).

• The lesson is in Spanish with English subtitles. Its sister video in English with Spanish subtitles will be released shortly. 

• This lesson will eventually be followed by 10 short animated trailers designed for social media, each of which captures a key theme discussed in the lesson.

• Resources permitting, PSYDEH will create a second lesson in 2020.