We want powerful five-minute films that tell stories of progress in developing countries. What are people doing to help end poverty, disease, hunger, conflict, inequality, and illiteracy? Show us the progress being made towards achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Your film can win the $20,000 Grand Prize, be shown on Link TV and other TV channels worldwide, and can inspire action and change!

You may enter in six categories:

• Empowerment
• Innovation
• Leadership & Governance
• Local/Global Partnerships
• Overcoming Conflict
• Sustainability

Find out how to enter here:

http://www.linktv.org/viewchangefilmcontest

“Link TV is launching ViewChange.org — a digital media hub that highlights progress in reducing hunger, poverty, and disease in developing nations. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ViewChange.org combines powerful video stories with the latest Web technology to make videos, articles, blogs, and actions readily available to key audiences working in global development.

“At Link TV, we know that stories are powerful. They teach us lessons and shape our values. Unfortunately, when it comes to stories about foreign aid or global development, far too often the moral of the story is focused on bad news instead of hope and progress.

This is your opportunity to get your work seen by our judging panel of influential artists and individuals. Judges include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of prizewinning novels including Purple Hibiscus, award-winning filmmaker Wim Wenders, actor-directors Gael García Bernal and Danny Glover, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee Senator Daniel K. Inouye, and Grammy award-winner Angélique Kidjo.

Find out about all of the sponsors: NomadsLand, DAI, United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF), Explore.org.

http://www.linktv.org/viewchangefilmcontest/partners

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Link TV is launching ViewChange.org — using the latest in semantic Web technology to give you the power to change the debate.

“ViewChange.org uses powerful search technology that dynamically refreshes information as the video plays, providing up-to-date links to related articles, videos, and blogs. Inspired by what you see? You can now take action — to donate to a cause or send stories directly to the media and policymakers.

Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

If current warming trends continue unabated, scientists believe that polar bears will be vulnerable to extinction within the next century. WWF provides funding to field research by the world’s foremost experts on polar bears to find out how climate change will affect the long-term status of polar bears.

The vast majority of the world’s poor are women. Two-thirds of the world’s illiterates are female. Of the millions of school age children not in school, the majority are girls. And today, HIV/AIDS is rapidly becoming a woman’s disease. In several southern African countries, more than three-quarters of all young people living with HIV are women.

The current world food price crisis is having a severe impact on women. Around the world, millions of people eat two or three times a day, but a significant percentage of women eat only once. And, now, many women are denying themselves even that one meal to ensure that their children are fed. These women are already suffering the effects of even more severe malnutrition, which inevitably will be their children’s fate as well. The impact of this crisis will be with us for many years.

Studies show that when women are supported and empowered, all of society benefits. Their families are healthier, more children go to school, agricultural productivity improves and incomes increase. In short, communities become more resilient.

The Hunger Project firmly believes that empowering women to be key change agents is an essential element to achieving the end of hunger and poverty. Wherever we work, our programs aim to support women and build their capacity.

This video is an excerpt from “Devotion and Defiance”, a documentary produced by the International Campaign for Tibet. This powerful film contains extensive footage from monasteries in Tibet and chronicles the complex struggle of monks and nuns who defy the Chinese government’s heavy-handed attempt at control.

Here’s what you should know:

• The chief culprit in global warming is carbon dioxide. But recent studies show that black carbon—microscopic airborne particles commonly known as soot—is also a big factor. Black carbon may account for as much as half of Arctic warming. Curbing black carbon is crucial for slowing Arctic and global warming, and for averting catastrophic tipping points such as the melting of sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet.
• Black carbon comes from diesel engines, industrial smokestacks and residential cooking and heating stoves. Most black carbon that falls in the Arctic comes from North America, Europe and Asia. Because black carbon air pollution is also a leading cause of respiratory illness and death, controlling emissions will save lives and improve health around the world. In India alone, black carbon-laden indoor smoke is responsible for over 400,000 premature deaths annually, mostly of women and children.

The U.S. and Europe must lead on this issue by committing to stricter standards at home for diesel engines and other sources of black carbon pollution, and by committing to increased financial and technological assistance to the developing world to reduce black carbon pollution from diesel, home cooking and heating and other sources.

Uprooted by war and persecution, a refugee’s journey can span years and borders on the road to safety. With skill, passion and daring, the IRC has helped refugees rebuild their lives for over 75 years.

Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/theIRC

Renowned actor and activist, Martin Sheen, narrates The End of Poverty?, a feature-length documentary directed by award-winning director, Philippe Diaz, which explains how today's financial crisis is a direct consequence of these unchallenged policies that have lasted centuries. Consider that 20% of the planet's population uses 80% of its resources and consumes 30% more than the planet can regenerate. At this rate, to maintain our lifestyle means more and more people will sink below the poverty line.

Filmed in the slums of Africa and the barrios of Latin America, The End of Poverty? features expert insights from: Nobel prize winners in Economics, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz; acclaimed authors Susan George, Eric Toussaint, John Perkins, Chalmers Johnson; university professors William Easterly and Michael Watts; government ministers such as Bolivia's Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and the leaders of social movements in Brazil, Venezuela, Kenya and Tanzania . It is produced by Cinema Libre Studio in collaboration with the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.

Can we really end poverty within our current economic system? Think again.

The film has been selected to over 25 international film festivals and will be released in theatres in November 2009. Directed by Philippe Diaz, produced by Cinema Libre Studio with the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 104mins, 2008, USA, documentary in English, Spanish, French with English Subtitles.

Climate change is changing our world. Within the lifetimes of children being born today, it may challenge our survival as a species. 

The Earth is hotter than it has been for at least one thousand years. By the end of this century, if current trends continue, the temperature will likely climb higher than it's been at any time in the past two million years. The consequences of this drastic rise, caused by burning fossil fuels, are likely to be catastrophic: mass extinctions, droughts and hundreds of millions of refugees.