Jessica Mayberry

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2007

Jessica Mayberry

Video Volunteers

http://www.videovolunteers.org

Ahmedabad, India

Arts, Culture, Humanities, Community Improvement & Economic Development

The Bold Idea:

In the World Bank’s “1999 Voices of the Poor” survey, the most important need identified by the poorest of the poor was not food or shelter, but a means to a "voice." For the three to four billion people worldwide with little to no access to critical information, communication tools are often overlooked as necessary resources in the fight against global poverty and inequality.

In partnership with the media organization Drishti and local NGOs, Video Volunteers establishes small, sustainable "Community Video Units" (CVUs) to provide local language news content to marginalized communities. Community Producers screen these monthly programs from village to village every night, and aim to reach 10,000 people per CVU per month. Through this model, villagers will create and disseminate important information about local initiatives, thereby giving them a voice in the global decisions that affect their lives.

Biography:

Jessica Mayberry holds a bachelor's degree from Oxford University and has significant experience working in television production (CNN, NY1, and Court TV) and participatory media development in India and the United States. 

Moment of Obligation: What experiences led to the desire to start your own organization?
I was working as a video trainer in India with a group of women filmmakers from the slums. We were out in a village with a documentary film crew from the Asian Development Bank, all English-speaking white men. These outsiders were having a very hard time getting the rural women to say anything except for the usual pitiful sentences about poverty, when one of the community filmmakers came and sat with them—and got the women to start opening up. Suddenly, the women were speaking powerfully, humorously, and imaginatively about their lives and their issues. I realized at that moment that the wealthy world is literally blind to and ignorant of two-thirds of human experience—the world view of the poor—because our media is so utterly dominated by elites. I saw that the most radical and effective way to change the media, which is really our lens onto the world, was not to try to change the media here, but to empower those who are excluded to be media-makers themselves.

Gall to Think Big: What has given you the ability to dream big and take on deeply entrenched social problems in the world?
When I lived in India, I learned about Ashoka and made it a point to visit as many Ashoka fellows as I could. I must have visited about twenty organizations in six months. Reaching out to such inspiring grassroots leaders and activists was a great way to learn what it takes to start an organization. It also showed me that ‘poverty’ is not just one massive three billion person problem. It can also be seen as a series of relatively distinct, local challenges—each of which has a unique solution. Realizing this gave me a lot of confidence.

New and Untested: What’s innovative about your new idea for social change?
There are several aspects of our model that are innovative. We have reviewed the entire value-chain of our operation to see where we can add value, provide marginalized communities with a real voice, and prove that we can accelerate positive social change. We are creating local television production, not documentary filmmaking. The innovation here is that we believe that regular production of information is critical to helping marginalized communities. Our local Producers are all paid. We distribute our Producers’ content nightly via outdoor screenings. Our primary focus is on reaching people at the base of the pyramid. The media that is produced is entirely solutions-based, not problems based (as with western media).

Seeing Possibilities: What are the most important qualities to be a successful social entrepreneur?
Total passion for your idea and the ability to withstand the peer pressure that urges you to take on a more traditional career.

Which musical artists/albums get you going and keep you inspired?
We had a lot of fun with our Community Producers writing and singing theme songs for their Video Magazines. It’s great to live in a country like India where there is spontaneous music at every gathering.

What books do you recommend?
The book Broken Verses by the Pakistani Kamila Shamsie is a great novel about social activism. It’s about the love affair between a famous poet and feminist in Pakistan. I read a lot about globalization and development—Jeffrey Sachs, Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, Naomi Klein's No Logo and other such books—to try and educate myself on both sides of the issues, since I never studied Economics formally.

Which websites do you visit often?

• aldaily.com (Arts and Letters Daily is my homepage)
• comminit.com (I read the "Communications Initiative" every week for ideas for our projects)
• moveon.org (I love the emails)

What advice or quote do you keep close to your heart as a social change leader?
"Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman. The best moments for me in our work is when I see the community producers really loving what they are doing—really coming alive—through the opportunities they are being given. These moments are what give me confidence that we may indeed be creating sustainable leadership in these communities.