WeOwnTV: Idriss Kpange Filmmaker Fellowship

“Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end.” - Denis Waitley

Since its founding in 2010, the WeOwnTV Freetown Media Center has supported media literacy, civic awareness and engagement, and video production skills that facilitate workforce development and independent journalism in Sierra Leone. Our philosophy has always been that no one is more qualified to help Sierra Leoneans than themselves. This was proven even more true and significant when we were faced with the most deadly outbreak of Ebola in modern history.

By all accounts, the early days of the outbreak was a public health messaging disaster. In Sierra Leone we were paralyzed with fear. Many of the educational messages and public service announcements we were receiving focused on the idea that there was no cure or treatment for the disease, which only created more fear. People were ignoring the messages because of this fear. WHO, CDC and many other international NGO’s put out a call for local media groups to produce public health messaging. We submitted many proposals, but were never selected. In fact, most of these groups contracted with foreign media groups and their messaging failed to be impactful with locals. Many of these PSAs were produced in English and they lacked a portrayal of the cultural dynamics and characters that ordinary Sierra Leoneans could identify with.

We felt we had failed and really wanted to do our part. At this point in time, I remembered a Chinese proverb, “Failures are the pillars to success,” which inspired me to find a way to move forward. I also thought about our mission and philosophy at WeOwnTV and found the strength and confidence to propose that we go ahead and create educational messaging on our own. Our program has always been a great model of international collaboration and we knew we could do a great job. We knew that for these messages to make an impact, they needed to engage the local community at every stage - from writing, to production to distribution. So we began producing short films for television to inform the public on how the virus is spread. We attended Center for Disease Control meetings so our messages carried the information they wanted to share, but we also addressed local customs and rumors that were spread in the streets.

We partnered with the Sierra Leone Film council and worked with local actors and writers on the film series. I called all of the film directors within the Freetown area to a meeting, in which I explained to them how filming public service announcements can be our contribution, as filmmakers, to the fight against Ebola in Sierra Leone.  I told them that there is no money to pay anyone and asked them to volunteer. To our surprise, the actors and directors agreed. We funded the project via grassroots efforts here on GlobalGiving. On a very small budget, we successfully filmed over 20 public service announcements and three short educational films. The films were a huge success and were played more than any other messages on our National TV.  The Head of Television at the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation, said that we developed “the most effective educational messages with the greatest impact” during the entire outbreak period to raise awareness and prevent the spread of the virus. Our messages were so effective that many organizations that seek to do community outreach in remote areas used our work and dubbed it in local languages to broadcast on loudspeakers. The success of our efforts even made international news and there was a radio feature produced about our work on the BBC newshour as well as articles in the Daily Beast and Maclean’s.

In our failure to secure funding, we learned not to wait on the approval of others to accomplish something you believe in. We learned how crises can inspire flexible thinking and creative problem solving.  We also learned to trust in ourselves and in our community. Sierra Leoneans exhibited a powerful spirit of volunteerism despite this difficult circumstance and we are proud to make this known to the world.

As of April 2016, there have been a total of 28,616 reported cases in five West African countries. Of those cases, 11,310 ended in death. Sierra Leone has reported the most cases of any affected country at 14,124. There was no adequate medical infrastructure in place to support the kinds of isolation and public health work required to manage an infectious outbreak of this kind. The existing healthcare system was already struggling to deal with diseases like malaria, HIV, cholera, typhoid and polio. Additionally, Sierra Leone has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates. Extreme poverty, densely populated slums, inadequate infrastructure, mistrust of government officials and the international aid system, and significant delays in responding to the outbreak all contributed to the massive scale of the epidemic.

Many local hospitals, short on both staff and adequate supplies, simply closed in the face of the rapidly spreading disease. This left the country unable to treat other medical needs, causing additional deaths that many health officials estimate far exceed those directly attributable to Ebola. People continued to turn to their traditional health practices and burial customs, such as washing bodies after death, this also increased transmission. As Ebola ravaged the country, the economy destabilized, communications systems broke down, and social and political tensions flared.

This all underscores the importance of having a healthy indigenous media sector to help share vital information during these critical times. It is also important to note that new and emerging epidemics, like the spreading Zika virus, and the continued threat of future pandemics, make this project more timely and relevant than ever before. We believe that by empowering local filmmakers to create top quality media, and then helping them distribute it both abroad and within their own communities, we can inspire the next generation of media makers to understand that it is not only possible but critically important for their voices to be heard.

Arthur Pratt

Director / Producer, Survivors

Manager, WeOwnTV Freetown Media Center