Have you ever been to the movies and seen a trailer for a film that you previously had no interest in seeing and then suddenly thought to yourself “That is a film I CANNOT MISS”?
That was the idea behind GAVI’s most recent production. It’s a three-minute film by Ryan Youngblood, a talented young American filmmaker, that I stumbled across in Kigali one day, and I think he and producer Doune Porter more than fulfilled their brief.
In November 2011, a team from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) visited Zambia to produce a video on vaccination efforts -– their value, their implementation and the challenges they face. In the current global environment of austerity and ever-decreasing budgets, immunizations represent one of the pillars of global health that is a cost effective, proven intervention.
ONE pulled a lot of legs yesterday. We launched our new spot “I Predict” across the web and in an April Fool’s Day email to our members with a series of crazy predictions for what could happen by 2015 — “kittens will be banned from YouTube,” “Charlie Sheen will be president,” “fax machines will make a comeback.” We got your attention. Now we want you to act to support the one prediction that can actually come true: the beginning of the end of AIDS.
On the eve of International Women’s Day, I had the opportunity to attend a screening of the film “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” hosted by our friends at CARE. This bold film is the first in “Women, War and Peace,” a special five-part series on PBS that challenges the conventional wisdom that war and peace are men’s domain.
Films galore! I wrote recently about the Pan-African Films Festival and am back for another round of African film talk. Two Washington, DC-based networking and advocacy organizations, TransAfrica and afrikafé, have teamed up with the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center to put on the New African Films Festival, which began on March 8 and will run until March 13. I sat down with Mwiza Munthali, TransAfrica’s public outreach director, to learn more about the African cinematic arts and why they’re important to American audiences.
TransAfrica works to promote diversity and equity in the foreign policy arena and justice for Africa and its diaspora. How does this film festival help to accomplish TransAfrica’s mission?
It gives us an opportunity to help the public broaden the information they have about African countries. One of the problems in the US is that African countries aren’t covered enough by the papers, and when they are, it’s just in a superficial way. People might come into a story in the news without understanding the historical and cultural contexts that go with it. The histories and the cultures shown in the movies give a broader framework for understanding those areas. A film can be a very powerful tool to help people think further about important issues, like “Grey Matter,” a post-war film from Rwanda which discusses how people deal with genocide, and “An African Election,” which describes the 2008 election in Ghana, when the incumbent party lost. The point is to give the public a wide perspective on the cultural and political journeys these countries are taking.
With International Women’s Day just around the corner, we’ve asked our ONE Moms and partners to write about ordinary women and girls who have inspired them to be better activists. In this post, our friends from the World Food Programme write about Molly, an adolescent girl from a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, who dreams of helping other children when she grows up.
What do you see when you look into the eyes of the girls in your life you are proud of? We’re talking your daughters and students and nieces and neighbors. Charisma? Smarts? Courage?
At the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), we are blown away by the enormous potential we see. We see the next generation of women embarking on changing the world. We see the future of a hunger-free world.
This International Women’s Day, we want you to meet one 13-year-old girl we are proud of. Her name is Molly and she is a big-hearted student who loves dancing and dreams of helping children when she grows up. She also lives in the Mathare slum of Nairobi, Kenya where she receives a daily meal at school through WFP’s School Meal’s Programme. It is often the only daily meal she can count on. Her teacher says she is one of the brightest students in her class.
As you all know, ONE has been campaigning hard in recent weeks to pressure the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to pass a hard rule on the Cardin-Lugar Amendment. More than 180,000 of our members have contributed their voices to the cause, and they’re not the only ones: Global Witness attended this month’s Indaba Mining Conference and has compiled a video of interviews with African mining ministers and company execs who are tired of corruption spoiling their industry.
Big names like Musa Mohammed Sada, Nigeria’s minister of mines and steel development, and Mohamed Lamine Fofana, Guinea’s minister of mines and geology, agree that the corruption is a “serious challenge” and that the “most effective way to fight against corruption is to be transparent at all levels.”
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
