Video and Social Change
Around the world, video is being used as a powerful tool for providing community voice and social change. The cost of a camera has plummeted from $100,000 US ten years ago to less than $500 today. Suddenly, changemakers around the world can shoot high-quality video, and distribute it globally via the Internet. By offering NGOs cost-effective training and models of video production, Video Volunteers aims to make video a ubiquitous tool in the work of social change.
The Power of Media
Community-based communications is key to empowering communities to participate and to lead social change in their communities. It is also critical for giving the disadvantaged a voice in the global decisions that affect their lives.
Video is a particularly powerful tool in social change because:
- It communicates in the medium most appealing to people today.
- It breaks the literacy barrier.
- It is the most cost-effective way to reach large numbers of people if distributed strategically.
- It expands an NGOs' reach and scale.
- It promotes behavior change.
- TVs and films are present in nearly every village on the planet.
- It is a powerful tool in education, fundraising, networking and advocacy.
- It gives a voice to the poor to communicate their needs and knowledge to the outside world.
- It provides a platform to demand accountability and transparency from those in power
- It acts as a forum for communities to discuss critical but unspoken social issues.
- It encourages 'people's led development', where the call for change is coming from within the community.
- It develops grassroots leaders and communicators.
- It provides livelihoods.
Video Volunteers is an international media organization empowering the voices of the world’s unheard communities. Its mission is to empower the world’s poorest citizens to right the wrongs they witness by becoming players in the global media revolution. Video Volunteers provides disadvantaged communities with journalistic, critical thinking and creative skills, teaching people to articulate and share their perspectives on the issues that matter to them – on a local and a global scale.
