About Video Volunteers

Video Volunteers and our partners are creating a global social media network, which provides solutions-based media for marginalized and poor communities around the world.

Based in New York and Ahmedabad, India, we have partnered with Drishti and a network of innovative Indian NGOs to develop a community media initiative in India that is using video to empower communities to take action around critical issues relevant to development. This “Community Video Unit” initiative is undertaken in partnership with leading NGOs around the world.

In the Community Video Unit model, 6-10 community members are trained as full-time, paid Community Video Producers. Every month, they produce a new local-language “Video Magazine” on a different social issue and screen it in slums and villages on widescreen projectors to up to 10,000 people.

The Community Video Unit (CVU) has proven an effective tool for an NGO to expand their own programmatic scale and reach, promote awareness and information, and to enable communities to advocate with authority. It also empowers communities with a voice, both locally and globally, when we distribute the videos to the mainstream media.

Our approach bridges the literacy barrier, and communicates to people in the visual medium they like best. Finally, it promotes community-led change, through focused discussions and follow-ups with audiences around a “Call to Action” in community screenings that often reach the majority of a village or slum in ways that development programs cannot.

In June 2006, the first six Community Video Units were launched with seven leading Indian NGOs in the three states of India. There are over forty grassroots Community Video Producers, who have already held more than 500 community screenings, seen by more than 100,000 local people that are resulting in both government and communities taking specific and measurable actions.

We look forward to hearing from you and working with you towards creating positive social change.