Footage Foundation

Footage Foundation is a global nonprofit that seeks to amplify the voices of unheard young people and their communities with a focus on girls and young women (www.footageyouth.org).

Specifically, we design impactful, sustainable social change programs that use local technology and expressive multimedia tools (such as mobile digital storytelling) to bring the underrepresented voices and experiences of young people into conversations on the world’s most challenging issues, including violence against women, gender equality, and education.

Our flagship program Girl-talk-Girl (www.girltalkgirl.org), funded by the U.S. Department of State, works with brave young women in NYC and St. Petersburg, Russia, and focuses on illuminating their experiences with gender-based violence by creating an international platform for dialogue. We are currently expanding this program by training young women as mobile digital storytelling leaders who themselves extend the initiative and spark further dialogue.  Girl-Talk-Girl has been shown to increase participants’ compassion, understanding, and confidence, and reminds young women that they are not alone in their experiences as it helps them find comfort in the global community. Like in all of our Footage initiatives, young women form a grass-roots movement with storytelling and compassion at the core.

Four social science PhDs at the University of Cambridge founded Footage; as such all of our programs are underpinned by rigorous, cutting-edge research and theory on social change, transformation, and impact.

CURRENT PROGRAMS & METHODS

In 2014 Footage Foundation has awarded a U.S.-Russia Peer-to-Peer Dialogue Program Award from the US State Department for the project entitled Girl-talk-Girl: Mobile Digital Storytelling from New York to St. Petersburg. Since late 2014 this project has been developing a dynamic collaboration between American and Russian young women at-risk to gender violence in New York City and St. Petersburg. Through this project young women from these two large metropolises engage in an innovative program called mVoiceWorks©, which combines mobile digital storytelling and human-centered design. The young women are producing and sharing mobile digital stories (1-4 minute multimedia narratives) which are serving as a platform to spark peer-to-peer dialogue exploring both unique and common experiences with respect to the GBV that is ever-present in the lives of urban young women globally. Starting late 2015 with further funding from the U.S. State Department we will be scaling this project in both cities — watch this space!

mVoiceWorks© is a unique participatory voice methodology used by Footage Foundation that includes workshops, mobile digital storytelling, and (where needed) human-centered design. Footage Foundation uses this methods in our Girl-talk-Girl Program; with further funding it will be used in other programs in 2016. Contact us to learn more, and to find out if this method would suit your organization’s needs.