WeSurvive: Stories of the Ebola Outbreak

Dear GlobalGiving Community,

After filming our documentary Survivors one of my dreams was to have a statue erected that would honor and memorialize the many victims and selfless heroes of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Many in local government here in Sierra Leone seemed to want to move beyond the outbreak rather than reflect on what transpired and our focus turned to preserving the material we had recorded as an oral history archive. When Emory University showed interets in preserving the database, I felt as God again was brining to life my dream and the WeSurvive database could stand as the statue I had envisioned. My hope is that these materials will serve to educate healthcare workers, researchers and broad group of humanity eager to learn from the past sucesses and mistakes, and interested in understanding different cultural mindsets and open to absorbing the many pains of what transpired in our beloved country Sierra Leone.

Next month, April 18th, 4:00-5:15 We will launch the database at Emory University in the Jones Room at Woodruff Library. The event will feature the Ebola survivors' interviews. Our hope is to raise awareness of the materials and discuss the process/value of building first-person narrative/oral history collections around health.

Forever grateful,
Arthur Pratt

Hey everyone,

This is arthur and I am excited to report that I am in the US. I was selected to be a part of the inaugural International Documentary Association (IDA)  Getting Real fellowship. I spent one week in Los Angeles, and am so grateful to the folks from IDA, Rick and Keisha to name a few, who have been such wonderful supporters and hosts to me. While here in the US I am also researching my new documentary Another Chance in Atlanta, GA (click on hyperlinked title to learn more. 

While in Atlanta, I also had a chance to visit our colleagues at Emory University where we delivered the WeSurvive artchive. I met up with Jonathan and Jon from the Oral Histories department and we had lunch. Jonathan is responsible for setting up the website and materials. after lunch he gave me a brief tour of the campus showing the museum and library etc... It's such a massive library and their archives have a lot of material on Africa. At the library, Professor Scully also joined us in the discussion which was wonderful as she was such an important advisor to the project and the SURVIVORS film.

Jonathan also showed me how the archive will look once it launches. He showed me some of the features, including if you want to see English titles, you can turn it on. At some point, the titles could be done in other languages like French, Spanish, German or any other language that is suited. If you want to get your subtitling in whatever language, then you'd be able to turn that language on while the video is being played. 

We spoke about when the website will launch. Jonathan said he is planning on sometime in March 2023. He thinks then we will be able to organize some kind of a launch program and they want me to attend in person which would be wonderful. So excited about this material being made available to the public and it's value to researches in the US and around the world.

With gratitude, 

Arthur