When Lord Seb Coe’s charity International Inspiration wanted to showcase how it is changing lives throughout the world, it asked us to produce a film. We told the story of Mercy Anne from Kenya, who was thrown out from her family home after becoming pregnant. With the support of International Inspiration and the East Africa Cup, Mercy Anne became a football coach and a mentor to other young people in trouble.
Supporting sport for development: the East Africa Cup
Training Director Nick Raistrick has a strong interest in sport for development, and has been involved with the East Africa Cup in Moshi, Tanzania, for more than a decade. He delivered training with young people at the event as a volunteer, and acted as its director of media development when the EAC team won “Best Sports Event for Peace” award at the Peace and Sport awards in Monaco in 2011.
He also produced a film of the event, which was broadcast on the UK’s Community Channel.
You can read his account of the first ten years of the event and its role in assisting development at: https://www.sportanddev.org/en/article/publication/east-africa-cup-first-ten-years
Nick has also developed online training material for BBC Media Action on sport for development and in reporting sport; and produced packages which were broadcast on BBC World Service radio on sport for development issues raised at the event.
Nick was also part of a BBC delegation attended the 2007 ‘Next Step’ conference in Windhoek, Namibia, where he worked on participatory video sessions.
A new audience: university students
In 2019, the Training Station started working with a new partner, the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, UK.
The RAU received government funding under the Catalyst programme to develop full postgraduate courses which students can follow almost totally online. This requires large quantities of video resources to be produced to a tight budget. We have used lightweight video production techniques honed in our work in the development sector to produce films to a high standard at modest cost.
Combatting gender-based violence
The Training Station set up the Khatwah project to combat the growing incidence of violence, especially against women, among communities displaced by conflict in the Middle East. We established a team of creatives who made informational films and campaigns that were featured on TV and screens in refugee camps.
One film asked: who’s to blame for the violence?
Another film challenged men to speak up over street harassment, which harms women and girls across the world. It prevents them from participating fully in the economy, holds back their education, and can prevent them from seeing family and friends.
Video production
- A 30-min film on advanced robotics for the EU (http://www.backtotheplanet.co.uk/portfolio/brl-robotics)
- A 15-minute radio documentary on nuclear science for BBC Radio 4
- (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00shrcc/episodes/player)
- 20-minute film on the East Africa youth soccer cup for The Community Channel (http://www.communitychannel.org/video/yYZcTOzVAP0/the_road_to_moshi)
- 30 x 1-minute promotional films for the University of the West of England (http://www1.uwe.ac.uk/whyuwe/uwestudentstories)
- A short film promoting the work of the Wildlife Trusts, featuring Sir David Attenborough (http://www.herefordshirewt.org/wildplay/untold_stories.html)