Daughters of Bangladesh Garment Factory Workers is a short documentary which follows the personal stories of 5 girls aged between 7 and 15. The film gives an intimate insight into their world, their relationships with their mothers and how factory work shapes their lives. Daughters of Bangladesh is Lensational’s first video journalism project featuring and created by the daughters themselves. This film advocates for corporations to commit to supply chain transparency as well as advancing the welfare of the most vulnerable workers and their families.

Lensational is an award-winning, non-profit social enterprise, with the mission of empowering women through photography and videography. For Daughters of Bangladesh Garment Factory Workers, they have partnered with Rainbow Collective, a documentary producer focused on human, children and social rights, to create a film as a part of an ongoing media training scheme at Nagorik Uddyog, offering children of garment workers a route into further education.

The Q&A discussion following the film will focus on the unheard voices of overlooked women in journalism and how to get these narratives into the public eye. The girls in the film are able to share their personal stories with the world on how garment factory work affects their lives indirectly, reflecting a variety of emotions and capturing moments of intimate visual stories. Our speakers, with a range of journalistic experiences will focus on how best to continue to empower women such as the girls in the film.

Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldp2-a1DG2c&app=desktop

Moderator

Lucile Stengel: Head of Social Media and editor Lensational

Lucile currently works for the BBC World Service, where she dedicates her time to understanding and better servicing the BBC’s audience in developing countries, as well as developing a new impact framework for the organisation. Lucile has a particular interest in the interplay of gender, culture, and the media, an area she has been researching since university. She holds a BSc in Political Science, a MA in Global Communications and Strategy, and a MSc in Local Economic Development from Sciences Po and the LSE. She has developed a repertoire of research and strategy skills in her previous experiences across the media and third sector, and regularly contributes to gender and social justice publications.

Speakers

Richard York is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of Rainbow Collective

Alongside their own award-winning broadcast and cinematic documentaries (Al Jazeera, Britdoc, SABC), Rainbow Collective have designed and facilitated projects in countries including Bangladesh, Jamaica, South Africa, Cambodia and Turkey, empowering marginalised children and adults to produce powerful and effective documentaries and animation. The films their students produce have proved equally at home screening at international film festivals as they are at the centre of campaigns for real social change. Since 2008 Rainbow Collective have worked closely with garment working communities and trade unions to improve working and living conditions through films and training projects, including playing a key role in the successful campaign to secure full compensation for the families affected and bereaved by the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh.

As the country sinks into an increasingly repressive regime under the helm of current President Abdulla Yameen – and strengthens ties with China and Saudi Arabia – we will be joined by exiled former president Mohamed Nasheed, journalist and author of The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy JJ Robinson, and others, to discuss the current situation in this small yet turbulent archipelago.

With at least 100 Maldivian jihadists now fighting in Syria and Iraq, a significant share of the country’s modest population, we will also discuss the increasing role of Islamism – as well as the implications for the wider South Asia region. We will explore hopes for the future and the role of an increasingly-repressed media in supporting an eventual transition to democracy – all as the impending threat of climate change on the low-lying islands continues to loom large.

This event will be chaired by BBC News South Asia editor Charles Haviland.

Mohamed Nasheed is a politician, environmental and human rights activist, and served as the fourth, and first democratically-elected, President of the Maldives from 2008 until 2012. In 2010, Newsweek included President Nasheed in its list of the ‘World’s Ten Best Leaders’, and he is frequently dubbed the ‘Mandela of the Maldives’. Nasheed is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Anna Lindh Prize in recognition of his work promoting human rights, democracy and environmental protection, and the James Lawson Award for the practice of non-violent action.

JJ Robinson is a journalist and author of The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy. He spent four years working as an editor of the Maldives’ first independent English-language news outlet, and was among the only foreign witnesses to the 2012 coup d’état that toppled Nasheed‘s government. He was the Maldives’ Reuters correspondent and its Reporters Without Borders representative, and has appeared on the BBC, Radio Australia, Al Jazeera and other outlets as a Maldives expert.

Abbas Faiz is an independent South Asia specialist focusing on a number of countries including the Maldives. Until early 2016, he worked as a senior researcher with Amnesty International. He has travelled widely within the region and has authored scores of reports, press releases and policy documents during his 30-year working time with Amnesty, covering human rights concerns in almost all countries of South Asia including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. He has given in-depth interviews on human rights issues to a range of media, including Al Jazeera, ABC, CNN and the BBC, and has written for the Guardian, New Statesman and the Lancet amongst others. He has closely monitored the human rights situation in the Maldives over the past 20 years, and has provided strong support during this period to the country’s ongoing movement for democracy and human rights protection.