Launch of Community Video Unit

We are happy to inform you that, our Community Video Unit(CVU) will start its operations from today that is 25th June 2009!!!!

CVU would be one of its kind endeavour in Jaipur city through which we would be bridging the gap between the youth from the marginalized section of the society and the urban youth. We will inspire youth leadership through Community videos and youth facilitators with our partner Drishti.

Our core activity would be to train local community members in community video production. This training will be conducted by a full time trainer over a period of 18 months to create content related to their lives. The content will be decided by a Community Editorial Board comprising of people who live and work within the community. The content created by the community members will be regularly screened back in the community. The content will reflect the stories of their experiences, their joys, sorrow, struggles, dreams and aspirations in their local dialect or language, through their local cultural art forms and idioms. Thus creating a media owned and controlled by some of the most marginalized and exploited communities in the world.

The Community Video Model
The Community Video Unit (CVU) comprises of 8-10 community members who are trained as full-time Community Video Producers. They produce a "Video Magazine" on different social issues every two months. These magazines are screened in around 25 to 30 bastis or villages on widescreen projectors to up to 10,000 people. The video is a tool for us to expand scale and reach, promote awareness and information, and to enable communities to advocate and negotiate with relevant authorities. It also empowers communities with a voice, both locally and globally, when we distribute the videos to the mainstream media. It bridges the literacy barrier and communicates to people in the visual medium they like best. Finally and most importantly it promotes community-led change, through focused discussions and follow-ups with audiences around an "Action Point," in community screenings that often reach the majority of a village or basti.


About our partner DRISHTI
DRISHTI, a media, arts and human rights organization, firmly believe that the future of the media industry is Community Media. The cornerstone of a democracy is a Free Media. India became a democracy nearly 60 years ago yet its media industry remains controlled by a handful of business houses. However, over the last 10 years, a few media professionals, filmmakers, academicians, individuals and organizations have worked tirelessly with the government to truly democratize media. They believe that the core of democratization of media is when media is ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’.