WeOwnTV: Idriss Kpange Filmmaker Fellowship

When the 2014 Ebola outbreak started to take hold in Sierra Leone, my first son was born. My wife and I were living with our new baby boy in Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone, and the Ebola virus was spreading like wildfire through the compact streets of our community. As a filmmaker and a journalist, I was out on those streets every day, all day, talking to people, filming scenes, and capturing the terrifying reality of what was unfolding inside the homes of so many of my neighbors. Then, at night, I would go home and quietly watch my tiny son as he slept - every perfect inch of him - wondering, what will happen next? Will we be safe? Will we all survive this terrible thing?

One of the most important places for me at this very intense time was the WeOwnTV Freetown Media Center. I stopped by nearly every day to check in with my colleagues and brainstorm about how we could best capture everything that was happening all around us. At first we would just talk about what we were seeing with our own eyes in the real world around us, but as more and more international aid agencies and news agencies began arriving and broadcasting their versions of our events, we began talking about what we were seeing and hearing from them as well.

It quickly became clear that we, as Sierra Leonean Media Makers, had a critical role to play in telling the world, and each other, what was really happening on the ground here, and also what needed to be done to stop the spread of Ebola. We began making PSA’s from the Sierra Leonean perspective, using what we know about what it really means to live here, to broadcast warnings and instructions to our Sierra Leonean people on our local Sierra Leonean television networks. Our PSA’s went into heavy rotation and were some of the first to gain traction with the public in getting people to follow international health protocols.

This was a tremendously powerful moment for me - the realization that nobody knows how to do this better than we do. That we are the ones with the knowledge, and also the power to share that knowledge with our community.

So much news coverage of Africa today is created by foreign journalists dropping into our communities to capture the story, craft it, package it, and then share it with the international community. I know now we need to be doing more of that ourselves.

The WeOwnTV Freetown Media Center is a critically important organization for not only training a new generation of African journalists, it’s also the place where people like me who are already working as journalists can find support, community, and even distribution for the work we are doing. The inclusion of African voices in the telling of the stories of Africa is central to the survival of our cultures, our people, and our democracies, and the WeOwnTV Freetown Media Center is at the epicenter of this movement.

Please consider making a donation today to help keep the Freetown Media Center doors open and to support us in the important work as keepers of the truth here in Sierra Leone as we all know that freedom of information is one of the cornerstones of a healthy democracy.

Sincerely,

Arthur Pratt

Co-Founder, Director

Freetown Media Center