In fact, these people often pay more than fellow citizens who are lucky or wealthy enough to have an official water point. Yet, when water makes the headlines, stories tend not focus on the lack of access to affordable, convenient, improved water sources.

On Monday 11 April, a panel of  journalists and experts from a range of disciplines gathered to discuss how people working within the media can tell stories to effectively communicate the big issue of the global water shortage.

Before Mark Galloway, Director of the International Broadcasting Trust, led and moderated an interactive discussion on the global water shortage, the Frontline Club premiered four short documentaries which were produced as part of WaterAid and Public Media Alliance’s global sH2Orts film competition.

Introducing the films to the audience, Catherine Feltham, director and film producer from WaterAid, said, “using different styles, these winning films motivate different audiences to care, listen and think about the many different issues and problems for people within big topics like the global water crisis.”

Feltham invited the audience to choose and tweet their favourite films and provide brief reasons why:

@GaudyRebellion Wow! Who would have thought you could create artificial glaciers through insulating snow with blankets? #FutureofWater

— George Rosenfeld (@GeorgeRosenfeld) April 11, 2016

@milesbramdo #FutureofWater one of my favourites – a truly human story

— Beth B (@bethb88) April 11, 2016

@WaterAidUK@sampunglitro@GaudyRebellion@milesbramdo I really liked Blanketed Snows – fascinating ingenuity #FutureofWater

— Sven Harding (@Sven_Harding) April 11, 2016

sH2Orts four winning films:

1. Giselle Santos, Automatic Tubig Machine (ATM)
2. Vardan Hovhannisyan, Blanketed Snows
3. Sven Harding, Place of Sweet Waters
4. Ibrahim S Kamara, The Hoist

An audience member said that he valued how The Hoist addressed colonial history – and widespread ignorance of its damaging impact that continues to the present day.

Contrastingly, an independent film producer praised ATM for its simple technique of sticking a camera in front of a water tap and capturing the reaction. It also revealed the tap costs money, people clearly do not waste the resource and profits are plied back into the provision of water. “It was very simple, effective and engaging,” he added.

Menka Sanghvi, an innovation researcher and fund leader at the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, commented on Place of Sweet Waters: “It focused on exploring the problem, so people have an opportunity to get involved. There’s a tendency to tell stories about innovation, success, new technologies that might solve a problem because everyone loves a silver bullet. However, stories about problems are much harder to tell,” Sanghvi said.

Sarah Mosses, CEO of Together Films, commended The Hoist. “The main character Kadija looks at local solutions, she is an engineer at the young age of 19, she is a female innovator and designed the entire project herself. I feel extremely empowered!” Mosses said.

Bethlehem Mengistu, Regional Advocacy Manager and Acting Country Representative for WaterAid in Ethiopia, found it difficult to choose a favourite: “I am inspired that so many people from different walks of life are trying to find a solution. This is extremely important for collaboration.”

“The ATM was particularly insightful because the tap itself became a character and explored the social dynamics of tap water. This film neatly captured the different stakeholders needed to provide sustainable water access.”

Beautiful films @WaterAidUK‘s #FutureofWater event @frontlineclub. Need for human side to impactful films made clear pic.twitter.com/xLOQFvqLlg

— Miles Bell (@smilesbells) April 11, 2016

Journalist, broadcaster and author Alok Jah enjoyed the ATM film because it was very peaceful.

“It was almost like a ‘Gogglebox’ of water development. I could watch it for hours, and imagine other people would want to also. This is a nice bit of journalism, the other films are very good campaigns,” Jah said.

Curious to find out how films can successfully engage audiences, Galloway asked the panel what filmmakers need to do to create successful impact films like those that premiered.

Mosses pleaded with filmmakers to not allow their policy team to write the script. “There needs to be a middle line between a piece directed towards policy change and a piece for the mass public. Films for policy change will have more statistics and be factual, whilst a public piece will be more empathetic,” she said.

An audience member countered this point: “The success of a film depends on the anger, drive and passion of the filmmaker to make a change within that subject.”

Jah said: “Journalists are obsessed with things that explode or politicians talking about themselves. The stuff in the middle – everyday life – is ignored because we think no one is interested. Of course it’s harder to make people interested, but that’s what you have to do as a journalist, you have to earn your audience,” Jah said.

“Economics, politics and sustainability can be used as angles to explore ongoing political tensions, particularly in the Middle East where resource wars have secretly initiated current conflict. This will then shed light on other resource issues,” Jah added.

Agreeing with Jah, Mengitsu said concepts need to be translated into something very simple, to leave audiences with a sense of urgency. “In Ethiopia, 58% of the population have access to water, but more needs to be done. Journalists see water stories involving money as newsworthy, such as hydropower. But a lack of water supply or infrastructure is ‘old news’. I really do urge non-traditional actors such as scientists to get involved and demonstrate research to find new solutions.”

To frame the water crisis and its future for a particular audience, the panellists agreed the length and message of the film needs to be carefully thought about, even though there is “no magic formula” as Mosses pointed out.

After many years of receiving a considerable amount of foreign aid, Haiti remains an impoverished and politically fragile state. AIDependence tells the story of the controversial relationship between the people of Haiti and international aid organisations, and exposes the negative side effects of the aid industry, including dependency, corruption, and the corrosion of solidarity and the economy.

Alice Smeets‘ documentary follows Robi, a young Haitian from the poorest slum in the western hemisphere, Cité Soleil, and Sabina, his American girlfriend and former aid worker. Together they work to change the traditional system of aid and are partisans of “Konbit Soley Leve”, a movement which aims to mobilise Haitian communities in solving issues related to healthcare and access to resources.

Through interviews with aid workers, economists, and Haitian activists, AIDependence breaks down stereotypes about non-governmental organisations, aid and poverty in order to shed light on the various models of international aid, and why some seem to work better than others. Using the example of Haiti, the country with the most NGOs per capita, Alice Smeets presents a well-informed analysis of how development projects can give rise to cycles of dependence rather than long-term solutions.

Directed by Alice Smeets
Duration: 90′
Year: 2014

Protecting our planet has become big business, with companies like Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase promoting new environmental markets. Investors buy up vast swathes of land, full of endangered species, to enable them to sell ‘nature credits’. Companies whose actions destroy the environment are now obliged to buy these credits and new financial centres have sprung up, specialising in this trade.

Many respected economists believe that the best way to protect nature is to put a price on it. But others fear that this market in nature could lead to companies taking a financial interest in a species’ extinction. There are also concerns that – like the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 – the market in nature credits is bound to crash. And there are wider issues at stake. What guarantees do we have that our natural inheritance will be protected? And should our ecological heritage be for sale?

In Banking Nature, directors Sandrine Feydel and Denis Delestrac investigate the commercialisation of the natural world. Interviews with respected economists like Pavan Sukhev reveal the polarised views toward this method of placing a monetary value on natural resources that are in jeopardy of disappearing.

Directed by Sandrine Feydel and Denis Delestrac
Duration: 90′
Year: 2014

At night, a group of young men and women gather on the street corners of Freetown, Sierra-Leone. These Freetown Streetboys, as they call themselves, have disabilities from childhood or as a result of the civil-war that ended 10 years ago. Abandoned by their family, ostracised by society and forced to live in the streets, they form a close-knit community, beyond traditional, tribal and religious dividing lines.

Without showing complacency or judgment, filmmaker Boris Gerrets closely follows the lives of this tight community. Filmed entirely at night, Gerrets‘s immersive observations result in sensitive and moving portraits. The film delves into the inner world of each character to reveal the dignity of humans surviving under inhumane conditions.

Directed by Boris Gerrets
Duration: 86′
Year: 2013

From Somalia to Iraq, Haiti to Columbia and many places in between, filmmakers What Took You So Long? do not only make films – they explore, connect and collaborate with communities worldwide.

Ahead of their distinguished Guerrilla Filmmaking Workshop at the Frontline Club, we caught up with the team for an exclusive Q&A:

First of all, will participants have the opportunity to make a film during the workshop?
YES!

How do you define guerrilla filmmaking?
Guerrilla filmmaking is about going in without an agenda, integrating with local communities and using the smallest amount of gear necessary. It’s about being able to convey compelling stories without lights, boom or massive cameras.

What have you been able to achieve which you wouldn’t have by “proper” methods?
Connection: to the people we film and the people we work with. The small effort to take a local bus, or finding a fixer/translator at an internet cafe gets you started in the process of participatory filmmaking.

Where has been your most challenging and/or inspiring location to film?
Somalia is challenging day-to-day because you’re never entirely sure that you’ll be safe. Most inspiring is hard to choose, but WTYSL’s recent journeys to Haiti have given us an in-depth look at a very stereotyped country. Western Sahara was problematic due to Moroccan secret service thinking we worked for Human Rights Watch. Uzbekistan was tough because our hosts thought we worked for the BBC and we had to escape.

How did you go about working in Somalia?
Filming the TEDxSummit in Doha motivated us to organise the first TEDx event in Somalia. TEDx Mogadishu inspired UNDP Somalia to contact us, and together we created the Social Good Summit Mogadishu. This lead to our visual capacity training with the UNDP, where we explored with local staff how they could use film and photography to share their work with the world.

How do you decide which organisations to work with?
It’s an organic process that comes from a lot of discussion with the potential partner. But our reputation is a good filter. We don’t often have to say no, because we don’t often get approached by people with missions incongruous to ours.

What’s the story with TEDx?
Sebastian was invited to speak about guerrilla filmmaking at TEDx Athens, and then about camel milk entrepreneurship at TEDx NHH in Norway. At TEDx Doha we met Nate, who was organising the whole conference. He is now an essential part of WTYSL. We like to think we stole him from TED.

Who could join WTYSL?
Anyone with a passion for filmmaking, nomadism and learning. Alicia and Sebastian are amazing teachers. You can tell by the makeup of the current WTYSL that we are all very different. We bring different things to the table and that keeps things interesting.

What’s most exciting about the workshop?
You’ll actually make something. The biggest barrier to break is the one that says we’ll be wasting our time and fail. In filmmaking you have to step outside of your comfort zone and do what’s right for the film.

Participants will get connected to our contacts in over 60 countries, and we’ll help get you kickstarted on your way to making great content.

–
The comprehensive two-day workshop will cover both technical know-how and guerrilla filmmaking strategies. From live-streaming, iPhone apps (time lapse, photography, quality audio etc.), storyboarding and editing on the road – to finding accommodation (not hotels), inspiring the uninspired and incorporating laughing yoga into your visual life – this one of a kind workshop may change the way you connect to people.

Guerrilla Filmmaking with WTYSL will be held The Frontline Club on Saturday 29 & Sunday 30 June 2013. Click here for more information.

Bring your camera, wear comfortable shoes, and don’t forget your imagination!

All image credits: What Took You So Long?

With extreme weather leading to failing harvests and rising food prices, food security is one of the biggest problems facing governments today. The IF campaign has highlighted four areas that they believe can help tackle hunger: aid, tax, land and transparency.

One billion people go to bed hungry every night and two million children die from malnutrition every year. We will be joined by those involved in the campaign and others to break down the problems with our food system and ask what can be done to fix it.

Chaired by Paul Vallely, a leading writer on development, he is associate editor of The Independent where he writes about ethical, cultural and political issues. He has previously reported from over 30 countries and was the Africa correspondent for The Times. He has written a number of books including Bad Samaritans: First World Ethics and Third World Debt, Promised Lands and he ghost-wrote Bob Geldof’s autobiography, Is That It?.

The panel:

Paul McMahon has worked as an advisor on sustainable food systems to environmental charities and UN agencies. He co-founded and now helps run SLM Partners, a business that invests in sustainable agriculture. He is the author of Feeding Frenzy: The New Politics of Food.

Mike Lewis leads ActionAid UK’s policy work on tax in the developing world. He was previously a UN sanctions investigator and member of the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan. He has a background in NGO research on tax, financial transparency, human rights and the role of business in conflict.

David Bull joined UNICEF UK (United Nations Children’s Fund) as Executive Director in 1999 and since the the charities income has trebled. He has travelled to scores of countries to advocate for children caught in conflict or in silent emergencies.

Mary Creagh is Labour MP for Wakefield and Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

A lively audience gathered at the Frontline Club as a distinguished panel grappled with the factors driving change in India. Leaving the country’s recent growth wobble aside, the panellists unravelled the economic revolution that has thrust India to the front of the global stage.

The discussion began on a positive note as travel writer and author Oliver Balch recounted stories from his latest book India Rising.  His optimism for the future of India lays in his belief that young Indians can now realistically aspire to a professional career.

“For the first time if you’re the son of a carpenter, who’s the son of a carpenter, you don’t necessarily have to be a carpenter. That is a dramatic change… For the Indian youth to have the chance to be something else, that’s what the economic story has given.”  

Balch’s positivity was complemented by the cautious optimism of second speaker Dr. Ruth Kattumuri, co-Director of the India Observatory and Asia Research Centre at LSE. Stating that India has improved vastly in the past 40 years and remains a work in progress, Kattumuri praised the strength of India’s plural democracy.

“The fact that people have a voice to say what they want, to go and demonstrate in the streets, the fact that Anna Hazare is able to influence certain things in the country, that’s what makes India dynamic.”

Moderator Shahzeb Jillani, South Asia Editor at BBC World Service News then brought in Abhik Sen of the Economist Group and the discussion moved towards doubts over the sustainability of India’s rise.

“For everything that is true about India, the opposite is true as well. For every great entrepreneurial success story that Oliver’s written about, there are thousands if not millions of possible success stories that have been stymied by all kinds of forces beyond the control of individuals.”

Sen cast doubt on the popular idea that India is a land of inventive entrepreneurs, stating that many Indians have to show a street wise cunning in order to survive.

“This entrepreneurial spirit that we talk about, it’s not something that’s been plucked from Mars. It is something that all Indians have to be to get through daily life. You have to be an entrepreneur of sorts to get a gas connection or a phone connection. You have to be innovative and inventive to make sure that you’ll have food on your table.”

Robert Wallis of the Panos photo agency added another sceptical voice as the lights were dimmed and the audience treated to a multimedia piece. The short piece detailed the impact of mining activity on agrarian communities in Jharkhand state.

“Most of these mining operations are highly industrialised so there’s very little employment for former farmers. The only employment that results for the people whose land this once is usually a type of scavenging.”

In a lively Q & A session, the panel debated the above issues without reaching a consensus although they agreed that the implementation of people’s rights is an important step for India.

View in iTunes

India is the world’s largest democracy with a population of over 1.21 billion people, and growing. With an impressive population it faces constant challenges of poverty, development and most critically, environmentalism.

But India, as a country in transition, has a positive and optimistic attitude about its own future. With a burgeoning middle class and a wealth of entrepreneurs, India is set to be at the forefront of the international system.

However, what is really driving change in this vast country and what sort of ‘New India’ will emerge in the years to come?

Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the rise of India and where it might be heading.

Moderated by Shahzeb Jillani, South Asia Editor at BBC World Service News. He was previously Editor of BBC Urdu service leading the radio coverage to Urdu listeners in India after which he was based in Washington as South Asia reporter covering the US-India nuclear deal.

With:

Oliver Balch, travel writer and author of India Rising: Tales from a Changing Nation.

Dr Ruth Kattumuri, Co-Director of the India Observatory and Asia Research Centre at LSE. A centre for research and programmes related to India’s economy, society and politics. Her research interests include growth, inclusion and development. She is also involved in research on climate change and environmental sustainability.

Abhik Sen, Managing Editor for business and management research at The Economist Group. He was previously editor of multimedia and interactive content at Bloomberg and has also edited an international daily newspaper headquartered in India.

Robert Wallis, a member of the Panos photo agency, he has documented countries undergoing rapid social and economic change, from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union to developments in 21st century China and India. His recent work focuses on the dark side of “Shining India”- a term coined by the Indian government to project the positive side of India’s rapid industrialisation.

Picture credit: Oliver Balch

Watch event here.

If you want to take part in further discussion about the impact of the War on Terror on our world today and how it might shape our future, come along to our FIRST WEDNESDAY SPECIAL: Changing world – conflict, culture and terrorism in the 21st century on Wednesday, 7 September.

The purpose of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was ill-defined from the beginning, according to panelists taking part in a discussion last night that gave little grounds for optimism about the country’s future.

Asked by David Loyn, the BBC’s international development correspondent who was chairing the event when it was that the mistakes were made after the attacks on the Unites States of 11 September, 2001, the answer from Jean MacKenzie, senior correspondent for GlobalPost was: “September 12,”

The former programme director for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in Kabul, said the major problem with the operation in Afghanistan was a lack of definition about what it was setting out to achieve:

“I think when we went into Afghanistan, the major problem with our invasion, or intervention, was that it was ill-defined as to scope, ill-defined as to purpose and we really had no clue what we were trying to accomplish there. The people who carried out the attack on the United States were not the Taliban and those who did, namely al Quaeda and Osama bin Laden had left by November 2001, said MacKenzie.

“They’re gone, we’re still there and we’re fighting [without knowing] who the enemy is, we don’t know how to define the enemy and we don’t know what the enemy is fighting us about, and I think our central mistake is to get involved with a war with a country that we don’t understand, with a goal that we never bothered to define.”

Malte Roschinski, a security consultant, political analyst and author who is based in Germany, said the “players” who drew up the December 2001 Bonn Agreement on the future of Afghanistan were not representative of the country because the Taleban were left out.

“We might not have liked them but they were the decisive actors in Afghanistan at that time,” said Roschinski, who as a journalist with AFP news agency reported from post-Taliban Afghanistan in late 2001.

He was also critical of the way that different countries took responsibility for different areas and of the German approach of institution building at the cost of providing security for the people:

“The international community never got around to creating a unity of action, which is obviously very important if you want to be successful. If eventually 44 countries are playing single ball games then you will not really come to decisive conclusion because you have 44 different strategies, as well as the civilian players, the development agencies.”

Frank Ledwidge, author of Losing Small Wars said it was “a matter of record” that it was “right within the purview” of al-Quaeda operators and Osama bin Laden that western governments, and the United States in particular, be drawn into wars in the Islamic world that they could not win.

Discussing Britain’s presence in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, Ledwidge said a “very well informed” Helmand Plan put together by the SAS and well-placed Afghan civilians might have been successful, but had never been implemented:

“We went there looking to create a Belgium in Asia and right now, the truth is we’d be lucky to get a Bangladesh,” said Ledwidge, whose military record includes serving in the the Balkans conflict.

“Success and failure has to be measured against cost and the cost that we’ve sustained, the very least of which is national reputation, then military reputation, then the lives and limbs of our own soldiers and of Afghans and the money, I simply can’t draw a success from that.”

To come: What difference have counterinsurgency strategies made to the life of the Afghan people and in Iraq?

 

 
In the third of this series of events looking at aid and development we will be examining the often troubled relationship between the media and aid agencies. With an expert panel we will be discussing how the media and aid agencies work together and the problems that arise.

Extensive humanitarian disasters attract a large amount of media attention whilst smaller and on going disasters often go unreported. Should the media be more receptive to aid agencies that try to bring attention to these causes? Or should aid agencies be more PR driven and utilise new media in order to attract the media spotlight?

Chaired by Mark Galloway, director of the International Broadcasting Trust an educational and media charity which works on a range of projects to promote media coverage of the developing world.

With:

Andrew Hogg, Christian Aid news/campaigns editor and former news editor of the Sunday Times and Observer and was editor of The Sunday Times Insight investigative unit;

Benjamin Chesterton, radio documentary and photofilm producer, co-founder of the production company duckrabbit and the website A Developing Story;

Fran Unsworth, head of BBC newsgathering;

Independent writer and consultant, Michael Green who was director of communications at DFID from 2003 to 2007 and co-author of Philanthrocapitalism and The Road From Ruin.

Picture credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. James L. Harper Jr.