Can NGO’s do journalism? Isn’t that the job of independent professionals? In this guest-blog, Polis Intern Esha Chhabra looks at a new campaigning film from Oxfam that seeks to go beyond charity marketing.
Gabura, an island off the coast of Bangladesh, was ravaged by cyclone Aila this May. Rising sea waters are to blame.
Thus, this winter, when heads of state and representatives convene to redesign our environmental policies, it’s critical that they hear the voices of those most affected by climate change. Barbara Stocking, president of Oxfam, alluded to this in The Guardian:
“It is the people in poorer communities whose voices are all too often drowned out in the drumbeat of reports, debates and summits.”
To avoid this, Oxfam has produced a short interactive online documentary that captures the moments leading up to the storm. Through extraordinary footage, the documentary chronicles the life of rural Bangladeshi farmers and the plight of the storm on their livelihoods- their farms flooded, their harvest ruined, their homes drenched and destroyed. It’s an effort to indirectly democratize the discussion on climate change.
Yet, the decision to use a documentary, and a journalistic one, demonstrates the emergence of a new media, free of definition and boundaries. Plus, it’s been released in collaboration with The Guardian– an established source of print journalism. Here is the blurring of professional lines- development, NGOs, policy, and journalism. Oxfam, a non-governmental, is relying on the mass appeal and power of journalism to advocate to policymakers. The tools are the same; the approach, though, is innovative.
Oxfam’s even set up an email on their website that allows you to write to the policymakers, urging them to watch the film. Hence, media meets policy.
This stands as another example of how words and images still carry weight. It’s simply a matter of how we use them.
This article by Polis Intern Esha Chhabra
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Watch the short film on The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/nov/06/oxfam-bangladesh-cyclone-aila
The Oxfam film is certainly effective, and visually of a high standard. I’m not sure it marks the emergence of this type of storytelling as others have been doing it for a while.
There was an interesting debate a while back on the Duckrabbit blog about how NGOs should use media: (http://duckrabbit.info/blog/2009/08/msf-cineama-advert-have-your-say/)
The multimedia producers Weyo have as their mission statement “to act we must truly believe” – I think that’s a great way to think of the power of NGOs learning to tell stories like journalists.
Interesting. The idea for this came from the story of coal which ran on Le Monde and apparently had 1 million visitors. We are not sure if we believe these stats but the concept of an exploration of a peopled landscape effected by climate change was something we wanted to develop. So far the Guardian traffic has led some significant action and is an interesting comparison for another web project – http://www.theclimatechallenge.org – which we have developed which has Tennant, Bernal and others going through a climate quiz show. It will be interesting to see what how these very different projects come off. On a seperate point, I think NGOs have been “thinking like the media” for years but have never had the space to create and develop stories that are independent of such channels until now. Digital changes the rule book but organisations need to be bold and not considering digital as an add on to an old way of working but remodel themselves around the new platforms which people live their lives through…