[Imc-ct] [Fwd: WITNESS]

[Peter van Heusden]

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Date: 	Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:24:52 -0400
Subject: 	WITNESS
From: 	Hakima Abbas <hakima at witness.org>
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Dear Peter,

I hope this email finds you well. I am writing upon referral from
Patrick at Pambazuka news, who suggested I contact you regarding an
upcoming trip to South Africa and the potential for collaboration
between WITNESS and Indymedia.

WITNESS is an international organization that works to empower human
rights defenders to effectively use video and other new media in their
advocacy. Within our ‘Seeding Video Advocacy’ initiative, we have begun
to develop Peer Alliances with regional and national groups who are
engaged in similar work. Through these alliances, we expected to share
tools, learning and collaborate on activities such as trainings. Please
find more detail below.

I am planning on being in South Africa during the first two weeks of
August (Cape Town and then Johannesburg) and wondered if we could
arrange a time to meet to talk about potential collaborations in this
regard. Please also find attached a copy of our 2004 annual report for
more details about WITNESS.

I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Hakima

------------------------------------------------------

Ms. Hakima Abbas
Program Coordinator - Africa and the Middle East
WITNESS

80 Hanson Place, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Tel: 718 783 2000 ext. 307
Fax: 718 783 1593

www.witness.org

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*_INFORMATION ON WITNESS
_*
WITNESS (www.witness.org) was founded in 1992, and uses the power of
video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. By
partnering with local organizations around the globe, WITNESS empowers
human rights defenders to use video to shine a light on those most
affected by human rights violations, and to transform personal stories
of abuse into powerful tools of justice. Over the past decade, WITNESS
has partnered with groups in more than 60 countries, bringing often
unseen images, untold stories and seldom heard voices to the attention
of key decision makers, the media, and the general public -- catalyzing
grassroots activism, political engagement, and lasting change.

Our* *program is designed to maximize the impact of our collaborations,
diffuse best practices as effectively as possible, and encourage greater
use of video in documentation and advocacy by human rights organizations
globally:

· *Core Partners Program*: Campaign-specific relationships of 1-3 years
in length, supporting 12-15 human rights organizations worldwide to
create high impact using video advocacy.
· *‘Seeding Video Advocacy’ Program*: Short-term trainings, workshops,
and presentations to human rights and social justice networks, and
development of training materials and methods to ‘seed’ best practices
in using video in advocacy as broadly as possible, as well as our
upcoming Video Advocacy Institute in 2007.
· *WITNESS Media Archive*: A repository of over 2000 hours of original
human rights-related footage and documentary productions from grassroots
organizations and other media-makers, available on a sliding scale from
free to market rates for broadcasters.
· *The Hub*: A new program to provide a range of tools online for making
effective use of citizen journalist media on human rights issues, and to
enable distribution of grassroots human rights documentation

*
PEER ALLIANCE
*The ‘peer alliances’ initiative is envisioned as an extension of our
‘Seeding Video Advocacy’ Program initiative, within which WITNESS seeks
to learn about, learn from and share best practices in using video for
social change.

Our interest is in allying with groups with which we share a common
interest and agenda: a commitment to the role of grassroots voices in
informing a human rights and social justice discussion, and a concern
for deploying media in strategic and tactical ways. We envision
relationships where all parties will gain from the collaboration so as
to enhance their existing strengths, and address challenges they face.
We are at an early stage in conceptualizing how these relationships
might work, and open to all input. The ways in which we currently
envision collaboration include training, training material development,
partnership referral and collective distribution and advocacy.

WITNESS is not a funding organization so we do not anticipate providing
funding to peer allies.

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