This Wednesday, April 27, 2011, Sierra Leone will honor its 50th anniversary of independence, and the Bateman Group is requesting your support in helping us celebrate the occasion with our friends at WeOwnTV.

A spinoff of the critically acclaimed documentary film, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, WeOwnTV provides film education and equipment for disenfranchised youth and young adults living in Sierra Leone as well as distribution platforms for their stories to be shared with the world. It was just about two years ago when we helped produce a fundraiser for the then fledgling WeOwnTV project at Citizen Space. A lot has happened since that time.

Shortly after the fundraiser, San Francisco-based filmmaker Banker White and a small North American team ran a storytelling and media production training workshop in Sierra Leone. Many of the workshop participants had their childhoods cut cruelly short by war and as survivors this opportunity to share their stories is not taken lightly. Today, WeOwnTV has grown to become an active collaboration between filmmakers in North America and these talented young media makers in Sierra Leone whose works are now being broadcast around the world.

WeOwnTV is officially launching a new year-long production initiative, ‘Picturing Independence: A Positive Revolution’, to create a group of short films that celebrate the Sierra Leone of yesterday and today. The project has already received the honor of being selected as one of the programs officially endorsed by the Sierra Leone 50th Anniversary Committee but WeOwnTV needs your support making these films a reality.

Can we please count on your support in one or more of the following ways?

• If you have a blog, please consider spotlighting the WeOwnTV project on it. We can arrange interviews with Banker along with the program leaders in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

• Help us socialize the campaign: like it, share it and tweet all about it.

• Take a moment to follow WeOwnTV on Facebook and Twitter if you haven’t already.

• Of course, you can also donate – no amount is too small.

Thanks in advance for your support!

By now, hopefully many of you are familiar with the WeOwnTV media education and advocacy project. Since I first posted about the program last June, WeOwnTV’s co-creators (Banker White and Zach Niles) have been very busy finalizing the curriculum for the inaugural workshop, fundraising, more fundraising, and traveling to Sierra Leone with their team. They have been hunkered down just outside of Freetown for nearly two weeks, instructing a group of young Sierra Leonean ex-combatants in film production, storytelling and social media – arming them with the skills and tools to share their powerful stories with the world.

I just received the following note from Zach and felt inspired to share it with the Bateman Banter readers:

Rainy. It’s stunningly, constantly, mildewingly, paralyzingly… rainy. And even so – still – amazing. Daily awe at the creativity and inspiration of the students. They are sharing in ways I know they’ve never done before. And almost every day one of them will say this is the best experience they’ve ever had. It’s heartening and humbling, but also heavy in its own way. Trying to figure out how to spin this top fast enough that it can keep itself going after we’re gone. Currently at this very moment… as the rain drains and drones outside – I’m watching a group of students huddle around a laptop. Eyes wide. And they’re … editing!  Editing stories that they wrote and story boarded and filmed yesterday. Most of them had never set hands to computer before this workshop and now they’re setting ins n’ outs..talking about establishing shots and transitions. It’s just a beautiful thing.

Tonight we will start the cranky generator. We will hang our white UNICEF tarpauline under a tin roof and drag out row after row of bright plastic chairs. We will twist some rusty speaker cables together and attach them to a battered amplifier. The power cord pulled and affixed at a slightly upward right angle, the magic spot for the inner wires to fire. We will crank the amp loud enough to outblast the sound of the pelting rain on the metal roof. We’ll make some popcorn over an open fire in a smokey kitchen hut. And… insh’allah … the projector will work and we’ll watch Slumdog Millionaire. Doesn’t sound too shabby does it? Just a lil’ check in from the rainy season of sweet Salone.

Once Banker, Zach and the team return to the states later this month, the next phase of the program will be focused on post-production and lining up distribution. Students’ stories and a short documentary based on the inaugural workshop will also be available on the WeOwnTV website along with YouTube and Vimeo, so stay tuned!

Please spread the word about this amazing project and you can make a pledge of support here.

At the Bateman Group we take our responsibility for being good corporate citizens seriously and our selection process for taking on pro bono work is pretty straightforward. We look for visionary organizations with dynamic founders who are providing creative solutions to real world problems, either locally, nationally or globally. While many of our pro bono clients aren’t technology companies per se, we tend to partner with social entrepreneurs who are using technology in really innovative ways.

My team and I were really excited to recently have had the opportunity to co-produce a fundraiser in collaboration with our friends at Citizen Space for a really cool media advocacy project called WeOwnTV. A spinoff of the critically acclaimed documentary film, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, WeOwnTV will teach film production and storytelling to a group of young Sierra Leonean ex-combatants and survivors of their country’s civil war, and provide a Web platform for their stories to be seen and heard around the world. Development of a media education center in Freetown, Sierra Leone is also in the works, and the WeOwnTV creators have already been approached by media professionals in Haiti and South Africa about extending the program into those countries.

I want to personally thank everyone who was able to show their support and attend the June 10 event, which turned out to be a huge success. Special thanks to Tara Hunt for donating the great venue, to my team at the Bateman Group for rallying a good turnout, and to my event planner maven of a wife for helping us pull everything together in record time.

I caught up with WeOwnTV’s brainchild and my good friend Banker White at the event. For those of you who were unable to attend, here’s the inside scoop on this inspirational project.

BB: What was your inspiration for WeOwnTV?

White: The inspiration for WeOwnTV came clearly from our first documentary film, which followed the lives of a musical band of Sierra Leonean refugees. The spirit of the All Stars film was really collaborative in nature, both because of how we developed relationships with the band members, and also because of what we learned from them in terms of how to live, be creative, and overcome life changing obstacles.

Secondly, the way in which we started to collaborate with the youngest member of the band, Alhaji Jeffery Kamara (aka Black Nature), was a big inspiration. 14 years old at the time, Black Nature was incredibly curious about the film making process and really eager to share his story with other people around the world. For victims of war, living in a refugee situation, they were really conscious of where the footage would go and who would see it. Being around them and appreciating how conscious they were of this was very powerful.

Fast forward several years and formalizing a curriculum for other young people to produce and share their stories was a logical extension. And I am very excited to say that Black Nature is collaborating with us on the project from his new home in San Francisco.

BB: What do you hope to accomplish with the project?

White: WeOwnTV has engaged a wide range of participants from young media professionals and students, to ex-combatant, street kids and child prostitutes. In January 2009 we met with and interviewed over fifty extraordinary young adults to become both project participants and WeOwnTV staff. We selected fourteen extraordinary young adults.

During our time in Sierra Leone we have noticed that there are a lot of NGOs in Sierra Leone that focus on working with children, and others that focus on infrastructure and development. However the generation of young adults who are Black Nature’s age living in Sierra Leone today essentially lost their opportunity for an education due to the war. In many ways they lost their childhood all together and are too old for many services being provided today. With WeOwnTV we want to specifically target this age group since it has been so underserved.

Our curriculum will provide highly customized professional training for video and sound production in a way that is very much balanced with encouragement to help cultivate an inner strength that already exists. For example, all of the participants are incredible orators, up to date on world politics, and have active intellectual minds. Our program is specifically geared towards bridging the gap from having the potential to being active media makers.

BB: WeOwnTV has a pretty significant social media component. Can you explain this?

White: There are really two components. One is how we (the production team) are using social media and the other is how the program participants themselves will be able to leverage these tools.

My team and I are obviously using social media to raise awareness of the project, and also as a catalyst for forming partnerships with other organizations and individuals who can support us on several levels. For example, we’ve been able to put ourselves out there, using mostly Twitter and Facebook, to identify other groups who are doing similar work. In fact, we are using these platforms to help plan the next leg of our trip back to Freetown, Sierra Leone.

On the flipside of this, we want to make sure the community we are trying to serve has the same ability to collaborate with their peers in other places. Our tech training will teach them how to get online and use social media in similar ways for advocacy. Social media and Internet access will obviously give them the ability and added motivation that comes from seeing their videos online to embrace these tools.

BB: Are there broadband infrastructure barriers for the WeOwnTV program participants that will dictate how they use social media?

White: Sierra Leone is only one of a few countries in sub Saharan Africa that has broadband Internet access thanks to the massive UN peacekeeping mission that started in 2001. However, while the technology exists, the affordability doesn’t.

Until the situation changes, we are looking into SMS text messaging because it’s a much more affordable way to distribute and update content for the Web. Actually, there are a lot of great NGO blogs in the region powered by SMS. All of our participants currently have cell phones and Twitter accounts to be able to update their profiles and websites via text messaging.

Until things change, the situation requires us to stay committed to finding creative solutions, not give up.

BB: How can people and organizations get involved with the project?

White: One of the most exciting things about our curriculum and the WeOwnTV social media distribution platform is that there have already been requests for us to do similar things in other countries, including Haiti and South Africa. Forming partnerships will be the lifeblood of the project so we encourage working media professionals around the world to get in touch with us. Everything we did with the All Stars film started with emails between people who shared a common interest, and we would like to see as many people as possible use the curriculum and our platform together.

Of course, WeOwnTV is a natural fit with a lot of the great work that other organizations are already doing. For example, we are already working with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and others to help develop and ultimately replicate the WeOwnTV model.

In addition, you can check out some footage of the event, which includes a special acoustic performance by the Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars (thanks Amy Ziari!):

We’ll be reporting back on WeOwnTV’s progress. In the meantime, please help us get the word out!