Video Volunteers’ mission is to empower marginalized people to tell their stories and create local change campaigns. IndiaUnheard, our video news agency comprising of 215 men and women all living below the poverty, brings out stories from the most remote and media-dark regions of the country, producing 1,200 videos a year, with an impact rate of around 1 in 4 (correspondents actually manage to solve the problems in 25% of the cases through their local campaign). We also collaborate with leading nonprofits in India to produce series on issues ranging from gender to maternal health, to land rights, to education and untouchability.
We have now trained our network to gather data because they can do so quickly and cheaply and it will increase civic engagement and better governance, i.e., they will use the data to drive change. Through our Surveys 4 Action pilot, we conducted six surveys on different SDG-related topics, which were turned into infographics, as well as community videos, aimed at popularizing the SDGs through social media and our extensive media partnerships in India. We are now looking for ways to scale this initiative and gain support for the importance of community-led monitoring.
Priorities as a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
Video Volunteers commits to working together with partners to train thousands of community members via NGOs, self-help groups, gram panchayats, village-level monitoring committees, and others to gather data on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), so that progress can be both measured and catalyzed.
We will empower users of the services, those who are left behind, the poorest of the poor, living in the remotest and media-dark areas of the country to gather the data themselves and use it drive local change.
