Tag Archives: Ecuador

Making Video Work Again and Again for Your Cause

Get on-board with Creative Commons License

It will be in the best interest of the sustainability community to adopt the practice of using a Creative Commons license to increase not only the sharing of content, but the mixing of content to seed the Web with messages to educate, inspire and motivate our citizens. Seeding increases page rankings, advances the visibility of sustainability leaders, and is critical to educating the majority of our citizens who use the Web to find information on topics of interest including the 2.1M on sustainability, 1.8M on climate change, 2.2M on Global Warming and 246,000 on pure water.

Re-purposing content and seeding the Web

Incorporating video from a download or screen capture, in whole or part, depending on the length and message, is relatively easy and can be thought of as a video quote or clip. Another way to express it: one producer’s video may be another producer’s B–roll, the supplemental or alternate footage inter-cut into another interview or documentary.Just this last week I received an email from AmazonWatch about their recently uploaded video on YouTube that is part of a petition campaign to oust the CEO of Chevron and to “Please tell the board of directors to FIRE John Watson.” This video was edited by the Amazon Watch folks and re-purposed from a January 2010 video, Message from Ecuador to Chevron CEO John Watson, part of another petition campaign.

Obtaining permission is highly recommended and nearly always granted for non-commercial purposes. However, producers are encouraged to use Creative Commons licensing to encourage and speed the process.

EXAMPLES

Here is an example of how I incorporated clips from a documentary, Screams of the Amazon, produced by Siegmund Thies and Joke Baert of Pachamama Ecuador into a radio interview, Oil over Water: Ecuador’s Indigenous Peoples Threatened by Barry Heidt. I converted the “radio” to a video having added clips and images and then posted to YouTube and here on our site, EarthSayers.tv.

This is an example of a ‘video quote’ from the same documentary that stands on its own and is posted on YouTube and Earthsayers.tv, voices of sustainability, titled as Easy Money in the Amazon – At what cost? by Patricia Gualinga.

A bit more on the Creative Commons License I used in connection with the above videos:

Selecting a License

Creative Commons offers six different content licenses. The first step to sharing your work is to select the license that’s right for you. The Creative Commons license chooser helps you select a CC license that matches the conditions you want. It also provides you with a snippet of code for your website to signal which license you’ve chosen.
Example of using Creative Commons
License work and encourage the seeding of your message:

For our work in connection with EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability, we use Creative Commons licenses. If you wish to incorporate our video work into your work, we encourage it, but only for non-commercial use. We ask you attribute the work to Ruth Ann Barrett, EarthSayers.tv and send a URL so we may see your work. For permission issues around modifications of our work, call 415-377-1385 or email ruthann@earthsayers.tv.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, May 16, 2013, Cleveland, Ohio.

Clean Drinking Water: SolarBag’s Ambassador in Ecuador

Ambassador Programs

Technological advancements need ambassadors who literally put the technology in the hands of those who would benefit significantly from its use – technology transfer at the one-to-one level. Over the last few years, Brand Ambassador Programs have been formalized and integrated into other PR, marketing, and social media initiatives. This post is about ambassadors as part of content creation and marketing campaigns in the service of sustainability.

Barry

Barry Heidt, Ambassador

Oregonian Barry Heidt, videographer and sustainability advocate, became an ambassador for Puralytics’ SolarBag when he carried one with him on his recent journey to the Achuar Terrritory deep within the Amazon forest of Ecuador.

He was on his way to Ecuador as part of an online video campaign, Ecuadorian Wisdom Keepers, co-sponsored by Barry’s organization, Sustainability Action Media (SAM) with EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability and with the help of the Fundacion Pachamama folks in Ecuador.

Oil Over Water

Barry knew of Ecuador’s reliance on bottled water and the negative impact on water supplies from the releasing of toxins from oil drilling into local rivers and the contamination of underground water from oil spills. It was part of the reason he was going to Ecuador to interview indigenous community leaders around the Rights of Nature movement. Shortly before he left, he heard about the SolarBag and called George Jendrzejewski, VP of Sales for Puralytics.

The Technology

The SolarBag is a purification, transport, and storage system for use with unclean water. Without using chemicals, consumables, or power, the SolarBag is able to remove microorganisms, organic contaminants, and heavy metals from water making it safe to drink. It can be used over and over again. It purifies 3 liters at a time, and can be used several times per day, on sunny or cloudy days.

SolarBag in Ecuador

A photograph of community leader Domingo Peas captures the result of Barry’s efforts – a demonstration of the SolarBag.

Domingo Peas

Didier

Barry also introduced the SolarBag to Didier Lacaze while interviewing him. Since 2000 Didier has been collaborating in Ecuador alongside official health organizations to design and execute different health related programs for indigenous peoples and has developed with his wife, Rosa Canelos, The Sacha Warmi Center, an educational resource. Didier can help Domingo and other interested community leaders take the product from interest to implementation with the help of NGO’s.

Sustainability and NGO Programs

Barry at the same time he is advancing the indigenous voices of sustainability also leverages Puralytics’ commitment to sustainability and programs they already have in place for the SolarBag 3L which is part of their NGO program to provide “clean water for the developing world.” For one such program with Good Samaritan Ministries, which like Puralytics is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, the SolarBag is making a big difference in four Malawi, African communities (view video) where Good Samaritan has a field presence, a key to implementation. This is but one example of Puralytics’ NGO programs.

More Sustainability Ambassadors Programs

We see Barry’s experience as an ambassador a good model for what we would like to do in the future when SAM and EarthSayers.tv team up to create online video content around the indigenous voices of sustainability. It compliments NGO programs already in place and can be used to increase awareness of important technologies in the developing world. We use social media to seed the Web with our content of wisdom keepers and encourage sustainability-related organizations to partner with us to increase the visibility of indigineous peoples and the technology that will work for their communities.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, April 1, 2013, Portland, Oregon.

Oil Over Water in Ecuador

My interview of Barry Heidt of Sustainability Action Media (SAM) about his trip to Ecuador’s Achuar Territory occurred on March 22nd so with a nod to World Water Day we talked about water. You can’t talk about water in Ecuador without talking about oil.

It will take a few minutes to read this blog post and less than an hour to take action. It will be time well spent in the service of sustainability.

Here we go.

1. Give five minutes to listen to Barry’s interview for background and motivation. He saved you the trip of going there on your own to verify that oil and water do not mix and to choose oil over water is to choose short term profits over the rights of Mother Earth and our communities.

2. Barry references a recently released documentary by the folks in Quito associated with Fundancio Pachamama entitled, Screams of the Amazon. This too is educational and in a much more dramatic way. Ecuador’s government is moving forward with the next phase of the 11th Oil Round, opening up 10 million acres of pristine rainforest to petroleum companies. It’s 11 minutes short.

We excerpted Patricia Gualinga’s interview from the video, Screams of the Amazon, and published it here as a short, short (53 seconds) entitled, “Easy Money in the Amazon, At What Cost?”

3. Raise her question by citing this short video on your LinkedIn groups to raise a frank discussion among groups with sustainability leanings ranging from climate to community engagement, to greenbiz. It really goes to the heart of sustainability and sustainable development. Help with seeding the Web by raising the question (link to the video) with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. (1/2 hour)

4. Sign a petition here to tell Ecuador’s President Correa You Stand with Indigenous Peoples for an Oil-free Amazon. (3 minutes)

5. Talk about it. Most if not all of the last of our non-renewable energy resources are in the territories of indigenous peoples.

Indigenous Voices of Sustainability

Domingo Peas

Shortly Barry will be publishing his two interviews with community leaders, Domingo Peas, Sharamentsa and Hilario Saant, Kapawi of the Achuar Territory in Ecuador. These indigenous voices of sustainability will give you the ground level perspective as the very existence of communities in the Southeast region of Ecuador are threatened.

Hope and Heart

Erick Gonzales

My motivation to call for action on this issue stems from the question raised by Erick Gonzalez of Earth Peoples United, “What gives us hope and heart to keep working on what is best for our Earth in the face of difficult changes?”

Engaging my readers in the issues around oil and water, spurred on by my colleague Barry’s strong personal commitment to the Rights of Nature movement and his journey to Ecuador, gives me hope and heart. I hope it does the same for you.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, March 25, 2013, Portland, Oregon.

*Screams of the Amazon produced by Pacha Producciones, Quito, Ecuador, 2013 and published on the FPachamama YouTube channel, March 12, 2013 is also found on EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability here.