Video volunteers

Video Volunteers ; (VV)
legal form	Community media
founding	2003
founder	Jessica Mayberry
Seat	New York City, USA (Goa, India)
motto	"Empowering Community Voices through Training in Critical Thinking and Creativity"
main emphasis	Grassroots Journalism
method	grassroots participatory journalism
Action space	India
people	Jessica Mayberry, Stalin K., Manish Kumar, Radhika Gupta
Website	www.videovolunteers.org

Video Volunteers (VV) is an international media and human rights organization and promotes the non-governmental organization so-called community journalism in order to give marginalized people access to media production. Video Volunteers is a United States (New York) registered non-profit organization that operates primarily in India . The Indian seat is Anjuna , Goa .

history

It was founded in 2003 by the US-American CNN journalist Jessica Mayberry, after she taught video production to Indian women from rural regions for a year as a scholarship holder of the American India Foundation. Mayberry has worked closely with Indian documentary filmmaker, community radio activist and current director of Video Volunteers Stalin K. since the organization was founded.

Video Volunteers is active in the USA, India and Brazil and has worked with organizations such as Witness, Global Fund for Children, Pangea Day and MTV.

job

The aim of Video Volunteers is to provide disadvantaged - especially rural - communities and marginalized social groups such as Muslims , women, Adivasis or Dalits with journalistic know-how , creative ideas and critical thinking. In this way, people otherwise ignored by the mainstream should be heard in local and global media discourse.

India Unheard

IndiaUnheard is a network of freelance journalists . It is the task of these so-called community correspondents to research stories about their own places or their social groups. Video Volunteers tries to reduce the knowledge gaps between government, authorities and mainstream media on the one hand, and rural communities and socially disadvantaged groups on the other. Thematically, the IndiaUnheard videos are divided into 13 categories ranging from "Art and Culture", " Caste and Identity" to "Conflict", "Corruption", "Development" and "Forced Displacement".

Video Volunteers pays around 1,500 Indian rupees (around 19 euros) for the three to four minute long films . From the Indian headquarters in Goa, Video Volunteers uploads the clips to various video platforms such as their own YouTube channel or the VV website. The NGO is also trying to offer the videos to Indian mainstream TV stations such as CNN-IBN or Headlines Today in order to reach a larger audience.

A central component of the concept is the so-called "call to action", an appeal at the end of the video that calls on the audience to protest at the responsible authorities, companies, etc. In order to reach people without internet access, public video screenings are organized regularly, especially in the affected communities. If a video from a community correspondent is successful, i.e. correcting the complaint, VV will pay the author another 5000 rupees (around 63 euros).

IndiaUnheard can therefore be described as a mixture of grassroots journalism and activism, as grievances should not only be reported, but rectified. IndiaUnheards' concept could be classified as participatory journalism: the community correspondents are themselves affected by what is reported and therefore often take a subjective perspective and are at the same time involved in the media production. In the long term, Video Volunteers is planning to leave the video production completely in the hands of the correspondents, i.e. not just research and shooting, but also editing and post-production. However, there is currently a lack of infrastructure, technology and financial resources.

research

In collaboration with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Ahmedabad, Video Volunteers is running a research project that investigates how community media can be financially sustainable. The focus is on cooperation with mainstream media that are supposed to buy content from the NGO, but also on financing models through micro-credits.

Honors

Video Volunteers has received grants from the Knight News Challenge and the Echoing Green Foundation. In 2006 the NGO won the Tech Museum Award, followed in 2008 by the NYU Stern Business School Social Business Plan Competition. VV was shortlisted for the Development Gateway Awards. In 2008 the NGO was nominated for the King Baudouin Foundation (of Belgium) International Development Prize.

Cooperations

Video Volunteers said they worked with the organizations UNDP, Witness, The Fledgling Fund, the Art Action Foundation of Singapore, The Global Fund for Children, Pangea Day, International Youth Foundation, HIVOS, Creative Visions Foundation and the Goethe-Institut. The organization's concepts were supported by USAID, UNESCO, and the Indian Sir Dorabji Tata Trust. In May 2010, Video Volunteers was the media partner for the UN World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) forum. Various media reported on the work of Video Volunteers, for example The Guardian, MTV, Nickelodeon, Al Jazeera, The Star Network, Pangea Day and various CNN platforms, and the Indian TV stations CNN-IBN and Headlines Today.