The story of the story in international development

“We have spent 50 years trying to take advantage of the media, with radio andnow with online tools, to effect social change through the use of stories,” said Stepehen F. Moseley, AED president and CEO, in his remarks that opened the launch of a new way for international development to tell, and share, its stories.

Link TV, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and in partnership with AED and DevEx, launched www.viewchange.org at the AED Globe Theater on Thursday. The Website gathers, sorts, and helps viewers share hundredsof stories, and take action immediately. LinkTV hopes the site will better harness the power of great stories to create social change.

Demonstrating the power of a good story was the winner of Link TV’s film contest.

Through film, we in the audience learned Kakenya Ntaiya’s story. She was engaged at the age of five, and expected to marry at age 13. But she wanted to go to school, instead. Kakenya negotiated with her father to let her stay in school, and a few years later, she negotiated with the village elders to be the first girl from from Enoosaen, a Maasai village in Kenya, to attend college on a scholarship in the United States. Now a PhD candidate in international education, she has founded a school for girls who would otherwise be unlikely to be able to attend school.

We then witnessed that a story can make a difference. The teller of Ntaiya’s story, filmmaker and winner of Link TV’s Aaron Kisner, decided to donate his prize money–$25,000–to that school and Ntaiya’s efforts to build it. Ntaiya was in the audience to accept it.

“I don’t believe that society can be bought,” Kisner said, noting that money alone is not enough for lasting social change. “I believe that [social change] has to be done through the changing of minds. That is why we tell stories.”

Following the film award was a keynote speaker and panel discussion that looked at how AED, One, Ahsoka, and DevEx use visual storytelling to change lives. Gregory R. Niblett, senior vice president and director of the AED Social Change Group, offered the example of Bridge Media, which grouped  Serbs and Albanians from Kosovo together in teams on a Reality Show, and showed prime time viewers that the two ethnic groups could work, and have fun, together.