See Index of   ⇒  Documentaries 

Title:   The Millenium Development Goals: Are we achieving them?   Gli obiettivi del Millennio: li stiamo raggiungiungendo?

§  see other titels suggested - contribute with ideas!

Proposed Length :  8 episodes of 1 hour each 
Media:  Footage in HD digital recording.Broadcast Quality Video, SDHS acquisition for non-linear editing.
Project Representative:  Stefano De Santis 

Dates: started on January 2009;  desired completion of  footage collection: June 2010.

Production:  Cooperation between Armadilla coop. (as leader of the EUGAD consortium) and RAI. A project financed by the European Commission External Cooperation Programme

Target  audience

We are aiming at an international distribution of the documentary. The same documentary will be broadcast, without major changes, on the television channels of all countries that undersigned the MDGs. 

The audience section targeted: average education, self conscious, curious about diversity.

The wide-angle, deep-searching, cross-cultural feature of the documentary will be upheld while promoting the product and will be used used as “hook” for raising viewers expectations and interest

The documentaries will also be visible on the Eugad web site (www.eugad.eu), which will also contain compete versions of the interviews, backstage material and other  knowledge resources on the topics collected and produced  by the Eugad project (www.eugad.eu/wiki).  The TV version of the 8 documentaries will be edited according to 8 MDGs. On the web site, it will be possible to access the interviews and the other scenes organized along the project issues (i.e. the questions asked and the research topics investigated) and the persons interviewed. The web version will constantly be updated and will give television audiences the possibility to go deeper into the subject, to follow the events about which the documentary is reporting as they unfold and to participate in ongoing debates and problem analysis. The broadcasters of  the documentaries will be able to utilize and integrate the content of  Eugad Portal into their specific websites.

The 8-episode documentary will also be present, along with the manuals and other knowledge resources, in the DVD that will be distributed by the Eugad project to the educators, journalists and policy makers; these outputs of the EU funded project are meant to support opinion makers in Europe to raise public awareness on the scope and the challenges of the Global Partnership for Development. More details in ⇒ The objectives of Eugad manuals.

Why Is The Project Needed?

In developed and developing Nations, there is a declining level of public support for policies aimed at:

§  improving understanding between developed and developing nations,

§  adopting fairer forms of trade and

§  facilitating the participation of all stakeholders in global policy making.

One of the reasons is that the public is ill informed about the Millennium Development Goals. This is because opinion leaders generally are ill equipped to tackle news related to the Global Partnership for Development; instead of doing research on this sector, they prefer to adopt a self-gratifying approach and exploit typical ethnocentric prejudices and moral scepticism.

Through this documentary, we to intend to illustrate, to vast audiences, the importance and charm of the work being done by individuals, organizations, nations and UN for the achievement of the MDGs. Without hiding (in fact while also revealing) the inconsistencies, challenges and the inefficiencies that often hamper global and local efforts, the documentaries will present the real issues in front of and behind the MDGs: what are the challenges and who is facing them? The viewers will understand why, in any case, we all are involved and we will be affected by failure or success in achieving the Goals.

Approach

Texts and images in the documentaries are articulated along a smooth-flowing, curiosity-raising dialectic platform.  This dialogic approach is meant to adopt a communication style capable of responding to the expectations and sentiments of people from both developed and developing nations  (see the target audience). This communication format has been an output of a research project financed by the European Commission meant to facilitate media professionals to promote intercultural understanding and overcome cultural prejudices and standard chauvinism in news making. See more on EC sponsored research on www.eugad.eu/wiki.

The documentaries will follow the Eugad team that moves in the field, in Africa and Asia, and asks policy makers and development actors in Europe “how far they are achieving the Millennium Development Goals”. While showing what the team “finds” and how the witnesses report, the documentaries will also show the backstage of the team doing their work, their debates, their approach, so as to portray different approaches and use different interpretations and keys to the issues under observation.
The working atmosphere of the team and the individual approaches to their mission deliver the mood of the documentary. Eugad team shares, with those involved in the implementation of the actions aimed at the achievement of the MDGs, the vision of the "Earth as a Common Home", where we all—citizens of the world—share the same desire for a healthy and dignified life and the same responsibility for peace, justice and reciprocal understanding. This is a vision that leads to the Global agenda for development, i.e. an "overall framework for action" where the prosperity of each community is seen as contributory to the prosperity of the others. The documentary will make clear that the Global agenda for development is not, and never will be, a single "policy"; it is rather a plan that visualizes how inter-dependent we all are in tackling the problems of the world. It is an intention to write, as in a global wiki, a cooperation programme for integrating our efforts to increase knowledge, reduce conflicts and care for this World we live in together. In defining the scope and methods of the "Global agenda for development", a virtual global workshop is created, where different institutions—global and local, public and non-governamental—find the possibility for expressing their specific identities in dialogue with the identities of the others; and where all institutions pursue their specific missions integrating and supporting the missions of the others.

 See more on how this approach is articulated in  ⇒ Documentary Outline;  ⇒ Documentary Treatment

Distribution

(intentions to be finalized with specific contractual agreements) First version to be broadcast by RAI in Italy.  This will then be distributed internationally by Armadilla in cooperation with RAI.

Purpose (Scope)

1.    To focus on what are the challenges and the stakes of the MDGs

2.    To analyse the challenges of implementing the MDG agenda,

1.   the EU commitment for it,

2.   the effort in progress and

3.   the results achieved.

3.    To explore what are the factors facilitating or contrasting the global partnership for development.

4.    To show who are the people, the institutions and the organizations that are working for the MDGS:

1.   portray their stories,

2.   see what their projects deliver and

3.   if their work really benefits the target populations and impacts on wider social settings.

5.    To show how people in richer countries are involved in raising funds and other resources for the people of developing nations and in what sense this benefits also the developing countries.

6.    To investigate how the work done in international cooperation affects the national and international policies and impacts the communication climate amongst the nations.

7.    To show how the media covers (or does not cover) the MDGs.

8.    To show how artists and educators relate to global partnership for development; to see what writers, actors, directors, artists, musicians and other artists take part in the global agenda for development.

9.    To challenge presuppositions that most development aid is wasted and that there is little accountability in the way development projects are managed.

10. To verify the presupposition that most development is sponsored by Western Nations.

11. To understand how far the local and the global dimensions of sustainable development are interlinked.

12. To investigate whether the lessons learned by international cooperation activities are used in national projects and policies, both in developed and developing countries.

13. To compare the aptitudes of the people of different nations in assuming responsibility for global development and inter-cultural dialogue.

14. And finally, to indicate why

          -  the awareness of the global dimension of development and
          -  the sense of responsibility for contributing at making it sustainable and fair
         are the indicators of the ethical and cultural development of a nation.

See the "theme" in the documentary outline.

Content

The 8 episodes TV documentary is built as video narrative of the Eugad manuals and is a  demonstration of the application of principles explained there.

Only a small part of the documentary  is  shot in Europe and other donor countries: most of the footage is taken  in Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East, South Asia and Latin America with the support of Eugad partners from these regions (KS , SIA , Armadilla). Countries covered include Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Mali, Syria, Lebanon, India, Nicaragua, Guatemala.

The  TV version of the 8 documentary will be edited  along the  8 Millenium Develpment Goals, namely:

§  Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

§  Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

§  Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

§  Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

§  Goal 5: Improve maternal health

§  Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

§  Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

§  Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

For more information about the MDGs see the ⇒ "Introduction to the Millennium Development Goals" on the Eugad manual.   (the link above to the 8 MDGs also lead to the relevant Manual chapters).

Inside the episodes, besides the narrative and the images focusing on the specific goals, the storyline follows the Eugad team searching for the answers about the project issues so as to achieve the project purpose (see above the documentary approach andscope).

An important part of the documentary documents what is the "backstage" of the project, i.e. how the team is pursuing its mission of documenting the MDGs and the challenges they face); this back-stage in fact is the dialectical platform where different interpretations emerge, sometimes clash, are debated until they are understood and eventually integrated.

In the "front-stage", the focus is about facts: i.e. the activities being done in pursuit of the 8 MDGs illustrated in the 8 episodes. In the back-stage, the focus is on the "interpretations" and the work done for integrating the different viewpoints. However, the gap between the two levels is not at all rigid: the reflections and dialogue amongst the different team members continues as the narrative voices describing and commenting the scenes about the specific MDGs.
The constant shifting from the analysis of the specific MDGs to the overall project issues and from the front-stage to the back-stage of the project will allow:

§  the unfolding of a “story”, that is the story of how the team face the challenges required to achieve its mission.

§  the articulation of a pluralistic and dialogic approach that is required in order to target a cross-cultural audience and implement the methodological approach. (see above ⇒ audience and ⇒ approach).

More in ⇒ outline and ⇒ treatment.

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