December 2009
India's Mines in the Sacred Mountain
An impassioned invective by Arundhati Roy speaks on behalf of the Dongria Kondh people in south Orissa. Their bauxite-rich ancestral hills, worth around $4 triliion, were snatched out from under them by the India’s supreme court and sold to British-owned Vedanta, one of the biggest mining corporations in the world...
The Fascinating Innovators of Brazil Community Arts and Culture
– Jessica Mayberry During our month in Brazil working on our new project VCU.br, my partner Stalin and I met with more than a dozen different community media groups. Every meeting was too short, with us starting off by explaining why we had called them and explaining our work, and...
Community media in Brazil – first impressions
– Jessica Maberry A mural in the favela made by local residents associated with the community arts organization CEDECA in Grajau, Sao Paulo. Political and social graffiti is everywhere in Sao Paulo, and making it keeps kids out of crime. Almost undoubtedly, Brazil is the country in the world with...
When a Small Organization Works in a New Country
– Jessica Mayberry For Video Volunteers, starting a project in a new country (Brazil, where we have just started a program focused on video as a way for young people from favelas to earn a living) has been a really interesting but also challenging process. When I started VV in...
Video Volunteers launches in Brazil
-Jessica Mayberry How can the disadvantaged earn a living from their creativity? Why are nearly all the “base of the pyramid” micro-businesses supported by microcredit agencies based on manual labor, or super-local activities like driving a rickshaw or running a small shop? Since much of the music we love today,...
Exercises in community video entrepreneurship
– Jessica Mayberry My partner Stalin and I are seated in the video laboratory of VCU.br in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with VV’s nine Video Fellows. We’re conducting a workshop in an area that is new for us – and which appears to be new also for the whole field of...