SENAVA - Sierra Leone Mudslide Recovery Film

Hello GlobalGiving community,

We are pleased to announce that we have begun the editing process on the film! It has been an incredible experience watching the stories unfold. After such a long period of gathering the footage it has been really gratifying to see how these three characters are coming to life.

We have also been cultivating partnerships with local organizations such as Badenya Foundation who were one of the first organizations to deliver supplies to people affected by the mudslide. Our main contact and a local environmental activist, Fantasee recently organized an awareness run to draw attention to environmental issues facing the people in the region.  We are planning to work with Badenya and Fantasee to use the film to bring awareness to the issues of poverty and climate change that were instrumental in creating this catastrophe.

To that end we will continue building relationships with environmental groups. Not many people in Sierra Leone use the term environmentalist but they have a deep understanding of nature and seasons and know that the mudslide was worsened by the degradation of the soil as a result of deforestation. It is all linked together - the poverty forces people to move farther away from the city center and then they are forced to decimate the natural resources to create their homes. This lack of urban planning is creating conditions that will continue to get worse with a warming planet. As Arthur, the director of the film says: “It is time for a new African Environmentalism and national pride to develop so that we learn to take care of our land." We are very proud to be supporting this project and enabling a new wave of environmentalists in Sierra Leone.