I really believe that film has the power to communicate messages to large audiences and empower it’s viewers by embedding images and stories into their conscious which they can draw upon to inform their own actions.

As we can see with the recent Kony 2012 film, video can be powerful, controversial and make an impact; sometimes globally. Some of the most memorable films I have ever seen such as Bowling for Columbine and Favela Rising have been documentaries. These can have a powerful effect because they expose truths from images and stories of real people and experiences which can’t be learned from a book or newspaper article. A person becomes so much more real to you when you see their face and hear their voice telling their own story.

We need to make our film different from documentaries or news reports which people normally see on the subject of poverty. It needs to be either; entertaining, shocking, funny, memorable or inspiring……preferably it will be all of these things and more. We need our film to have high production values; as high as we can manage (this is often something that takes time and money) and somehow we need to come up with strategies to create a buzz around it. We can do this through many means such as social networking and utilising the people power which I believe our special group of VAP participants’ posses.

Just imagine if each one of our 20 or so international members shows the film to five friends and asks them to do the same, alongside this our sending and host organisations could share the message amongst their network of stakeholders. Already we are talking about hundreds of people and these are people spread all across the world. We could also use public screenings, local television networks, blogging, and even flash mobbing and other ‘out-of-the-box’ and creative means to get our documentary seen by as many people as possible and make the kind of impact which I know we’re capable of!

 

Hi Everyone,Here is the link to Task 3 !!!

hey everyone,

here’s the video of our task.. well we have not taken our own videos and narrated everything but tried to put certain activities in the video which can help reduce poverty or atleast put smiles on the faces which are deprived of the luxuries and amenities enjoyed by us.

According to us, video is an expression of the people’s thoughts and actions. video creates an awareness among the mass about a specific problem and also conveys messages to the concerned people on a large scale.

In helping reduce/eliminate poverty, video reaches to the many people who believe poverty can be reduced and in turn unity in diversity is created. More the awareness easy it is for us to accomplish the task. Like minded heads come together to fight against poverty. A common platform is created for people to share ideas, analyse, reflect and comment.

Here is a small glimpse of what we can do or rather our contribution in reducing poverty..

http://youtu.be/YfJxxzNwERw

In the video there are 3 parts.

1st part where a school promotes girl education. Girl education in India still lacks importance. Girls in India are still considered as a liability in many villages and rural areas. Our contribution was to share smiles and distribute food. These girls have so much of art in them. It can be seen in the video too.

2nd part where hundreds of poor people are being given lunch. These people have no shelter, food or clothes to wear. Just a small gesture to convey “We Care”.

3rd part distributing food items in the hospital. Poor people do not get the proper medical aids because of lack of finance. Atleast one part (i.e food) is being taken care of.

We have tried to show that we can contribute a lot in many ways though small ways to the cause of reducing poverty. If we decide and determine a lot of small things can contribute in reducing poverty.

Hope you all will like the video.

Prepared by Nirat and Anisha

(The video is not a proper professional one but some still pictures framed into a movie)

hello all these are the videos of the task.

http://youtu.be/-2y_gT80n6c

http://youtu.be/M1fyPN4QvYU

http://youtu.be/CcaYr6H9uaw

Me and Jānis have tried hard to understand what makes children living in the streets and what makes village children to work? We have noticed that every story is individual, it is not always poverty that brings children to the street. So it is import ant to grasp the real situation, real stories and the real atmosphere. We want to show everyone what poverty does to their childhood and what perspectives they have in the future? When we will edit video puzzles together from all of VAP project countries, viewers will be able to see what poverty does to the children in different angles of the globe. We hope that this visual material will be a tool fighting against poverty.

We are both sure  that video/short film/interviews are the best way to introduce others about Medan and villages around it. And actually who can tell their story better than themselves? We are planning to make a large filming and script writing group, involving children we are working with. All of them agreed to bed a part of our filming team (we asked this question to several children and they were vey excited becoming a part of this project). We promised to have a large meeting in KKSP office in the end of April to plan our movie. You will meet most of children during your stay in Medan. They will be given camera and they will create the script. We will help them to arrange everything, watch other movies together, think about facts they want to tell others.

Even though everyone in VAP has made research about their community and poverty, while reading them, they don’t touch our personal feelings, because in or reports there are mostly numbers, diagrams, statistics. Movie is a way to see real faces, real people, real streets, villages, activities etc.

Can’t wait to see you all in Medan and hear your ideas!

Eva and Jānis

 

How can we best act against poverty using video as a tool?

The video is really a form of communication that can arrive all the people, and for us is very important that can see this video as more people better, so a lot of people could watch it and comment the reactions in diferent points in the planet. If you explain one  thing writing, you can lose information, if you show a picture is grafic, but is poor, instead if you record a video and after you can show it, will be the way for touch our sentiments, no only the image, the music is very important and tell good stories. In Latvia a lot of people live in poverty situations, but them don’t show others their own reality, maybe our video can help to be more real this situation in Latvia and with all other countries we can see that this situation is in all the world.

We can act telling good and real stories, for the people can see that there are diferent ways for live in a povery.

How can we best act against poverty using video as a tool?

So… we tried to think about the different parts to this question. There’s:

1. How can we best act against POVERTY using video as a tool?
2. How can WE best act against poverty using video as a tool?
3. How can we best act against poverty using video as a tool (IN SENEGAL)?
4. How can we best act against poverty using VIDEO as a tool?

 

1. To help fight against poverty in Senegal, we think it is really important to change the policies of the national government. They need stricter laws against the Talibe and more aid for environmental issues. So, ideally we think someone needs to give a message to the politicians and large, international organisations. They need to start to change their policies on a national scale.
2. However, we (Papa, Mireia and Kat) don’t have experience working with politicians, we have experience working with young people. So we think that our target audience needs to be young people, to teach them about their rights and politics in order to empower them to fight for change.
3. Here in Senegal, videos are seen as really cool. Everyone wants to be seen with new technology and cool phones. People also really like the same thing – if something is popular, then everyone likes it! So if we try to make our film cool (maybe with dancing or music because that’s what everyone enjoys) then there is a chance that everyone! will like it.
4. There are not many cinemas here, or they are expensive, so we need to think about how to show our film. If we’re targeting young people, we can take our film to different schools, colleges, the university and cultural centres to show it for free. We could even give it out as a file so that people can have it on their phones (although we have to be careful that this doesn’t encourage exclusion to those who cannot afford a fancy phone).

 

 

 

KAT & MIREIA

 

Dear VAPers,

Here is the result of the 3rd assignment of VAP.

HOW CAN WE BEST ACT AGAINST POVERTY USING VIDEO AS A TOOL?

I think the best way to fight poverty using video as a tool is making people see the whole process and how is the system it selfs that create poverty that why this project is so amazing, we can see the poverty from different points of view and analyze were everything comes from, that because there’s rich people need to be pour people (in this system), using this method instead of using the common picture of a kid in african dying starving and of course not using charity as a way to ‘help’ just to make us feel better with our selfs.

We have the responsibility to make from our experiences a video to change people mind to finally understand that there’s not people that deserve to be pour, or people that didn’t work enough, or that we are more develop than them so they need to work more.

Friendship

Hello everyone! This is the Link of the last task! I hope you like it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaZwuXWmXow&feature=youtu.be