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.

Exotic orchids, stealthy jaguars, giant armadillos, colorful songbirds, noisy monkeys and reclusive snakes are but some of the creatures that inhabit tropical forests — along with millions of human beings who have relied on forest fruits, fibers, grains, medicines, cloths, resins and pigments for millennia.

The forest regularly saves our global food supply by offering new, disease-resistant crops. Although we have sampled only a tiny fraction of the potential foods they already have a profound influence on our diet. An astounding number of fruits (bananas, citrus), vegetables (peppers, okra), nuts (cashews, peanuts), drinks (coffee, tea, cola), oils (palm, coconut), flavorings (cocoa, vanilla, sugar, spices) and other foods (beans, grains, fish) originated in and around the rainforest.

If we are not careful though, our appetites for these products could destroy the source from which they came as unsustainable farming methods continue to be a major cause of rainforest destruction and pollution worldwide.

The evidence shows that human activities–like burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas–are most likely responsible for the warming observed to date. And, the trend is clear. If we don’t take steps to curb global warming pollution, the impacts will become increasingly dire.

Our country is home to a diverse array of wildlife ranging from the highest peaks, to the driest deserts, to freshwater and marine environments and to all the places in between. The abundant and diverse wildlife resources, which are so important to our culture and well-being, face a bleak future if we do not address global warming.

Participants come from all types of backgrounds. Students have integrated their volunteering efforts into their curriculum earning credits at their university, college or high school, while others have been professionals, gap year students or recent retirees looking to take some time off and offer their skills and knowledge to those who need it.

We provide real programs for real volunteers.

It emphasizes responsible and ethical tourism by active participation with the local communities and by disseminating information on the benefits to the community and the wildlife that surrounds them.

Camps International already has sustainable development and conservation projects running in Kenya and Tanzania and is about to expand with similar ventures in Borneo. The CIT charity will direct funds to support these projects and ensure every penny is carefully spent. It important to stress that, unlike large international charities, CIT will avoid local government or other non-governmental agencies directing with how the money is distributed.

We know that by bringing football to more athletes worldwide, Special Olympics gets close to evening the playing field for people with intellectual disabilities. With this objective the Special Olympics Global Football initiative was established.
As one of the most popular of the 31 official sports offered within Special Olympics, in Europe and Eurasia we have achieved significant progress toward expansion of football opportunities for people with intellectual disability. Our long term partnership with UEFA We Care programme has helped us achieve these milestones.

In addition, local communications campaigns will stress the importance of a healthy home environment and will seek to increase the knowledge and adoption of proper household hygiene and sanitation. Likewise, the program will provide 400 school children with access to safe water and sanitation facilities in their school. This will coincide with the teaching of healthy hygiene habits by teachers and will be reinforced through promotional materials made available through this program.

In the area near Dubluq, Borena clans have wells with earthen ramps leading their cows down to flat areas with mud troughs so their animals can drink water passed up, bucket by bucket, by teams of men in a vertical chain, all singing to keep rhythm. These traditional eela wells, also called singing wells, are crucial in the dry season, and the clans have a schedule for which herds can access the wells on different days.

A well provides water, and song, for cows in Ethiopia’s dry season. Check out this video to see how Oxfam America helped one clan optimize their well to make it more efficient.

Minera Yanacocha is working aggressively to expand the mine. In 2004, the mine began exploring for gold on Cerro Quilish, a small mountain that comprises the top of the watershed supplying the city of Cajamarca and the rest of the valley. Dairy and potato farmers in the area and many others opposed to mining Quilish blocked the road to the mountain in 2004. There were weeks of violent confrontation between police and protesters. In the end, Minera Yanacocha stated publicly that it had underestimated the concerns of local people and asked the Ministry of Energy and Mines to revoke its permit to explore for minerals on Cerro Quilish.

In northern Peru, local governments, community leaders, and farmers say the proposed Rio Blanco Copper Mine would be devastating to local communities. In an area where drinking water is already scarce, pollution from the mine would be an environmental disaster for the entire region.

People living in poverty hundreds of miles from the nearest town find it nearly impossible to get hold of, or afford, the necessary spare parts. WaterAid research has shown that only 10% of Afridevs are mended within a week. This can have dire health consequences as most communities with a broken pump revert to collecting drinking water from risky sources such as unprotected traditional wells, swamps or rivers. Some take off the handpump and fetch water with a bucket and rope. This exposes them to the risk of potentially fatal water-related diseases such as typhoid and cholera.

To get around the spare parts problem, WaterAid Mozambique has been piloting the use of simple rope pumps in its projects since early 2003.
The most common problem in a rope pump is a broken rope, and even in the remotest areas rope is fairly to easy to find and cheap enough for communities to afford.