Participatory video - " The HIVE"

Our world is changing faster than ever. Covid has taken away our freedom to travel and connect. Black Lives Matter has revealed how entrenched systemic racism remains. And Western hegemony keeps declining as other parts of the globe claim their rightful places. And yet, most of the stories we feed ourselves about ‘them’ are still made by ‘us’. Makmende Media has always understood this problem, seeking collaborations with media professionals in so-called underdeveloped parts of the planet since its inception. And now, with a pandemic that keeps on raging, Makmende is letting go off the Western gaze even further. For example through participatory filmmaking.

SOS Children’s villages - Kids Stay Strong

We were asked to:

SOS Children’s villages was one of the first organisations to connect with us at the start of 2020 just months into the COVID-19 pandemic. They didn’t want to promote their work or raise funds, they connected with us simply because they wanted to show how children around the world were doing. SOS Children’s villages is all about creating loving homes to support children. Now, the importance of a caring family had become ever more apparent. That’s what they wanted to talk about.

The Makmende Approach

Knowing the power of telling stories through different and less predictable perspectives, Makmende made the kids the storytellers themselves. With the support of our local producers children around the world participated by filming their homes and families with their mobile phones. They shared their feelings and thoughts. We took their personal and meaningful bits of video and turned it into an uplifting social media series.

Impact

Likes

Awareness

Impact

Likes

Awareness

YALTA -

We were asked to:

Yalta is an initiative by the Netherlands Food Partnership to promote agroecology and business amongst youth in Africa. Their groundbreaking approach aims to launch agriculture into the 21st century. And they’re betting on the young generations to take on this challenge. The problem is that globally youth tend to move away from agriculture. So what does it take to get them more involved? NFP asked us to create a strategy and to produce content that would reach youth in Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Kenya and get that conversation started.

The Makmende Approach

We decided to stay away from traditional media platforms and instead use influential people to get the message across. They became the ‘faces’ of the campaign, but they were also the producers and the publishers of the content on their own (social media) channels. By ‘owning’ the content in this, their message became even more authentic and personal.

The influencers hit the streets to understand why youth weren’t getting into agriculture and how they could be triggered to consider it. Based on their findings we created the concepts for each of the country’s campaigns. All of them different and each tailored to the specific needs of the

Dutch Relief Alliance

We were asked to:

The Makmende Approach

Impact

Likes

Awareness

Impact

Likes

Awareness

River Commons

We were asked to:

The River Commons research project works together with scientists, policy makers and activists to argue for more agency or communities when it comes to organising ‘their’ rivers. They approached Makmende to collect footage and testimonies of river communities as part of a large research application. These videos had to be collected with minimal resources in a short space of time, taking an investigative style.

The Makmende Approach

We wanted to include diverse voices from remote areas from India, Colombia and Zambia. Considering the nature of the project, it made sense to choose an approach where the communities had a say in the content by filming themselves. This enabled the communities to share their input and participate in the research process right from the beginning.