Applied for a Fulbright

Did I tell you I applied for a Fulbright?  The blog has been on the back burner between that and a few other projects.  Reading Lee-Sean‘s blog has me motivated to post more.  I applied for a 10-month Fulbright grant to Ethiopia to produce a detailed case study of Sudden Flowers, the youth video collective I consulted for this summer.  The Fulbright application process involved weekly meetings with the Parsons Fulbright adviser Jilly Traganou from late September through mid-October.  Instrumental feedback also came from Tricia Perry, Rachel Aicher, Paul Ross, Orit Halpern, Jessica Irish, and Ted Byfield. I should hear the results in February.

Here’s my project statement and personal statement:

STATEMENT OF GRANT PURPOSE
Ida C. Benedetto, Ethiopia, Communications|4290
Sudden Flowers: A Case Study in New Media and Visual Culture for Human Rights
With a Fulbright grant, I will produce a case study analysis on Sudden Flowers, a youth video collective of HIV/AIDS orphans in Ethiopia.  The collective’s films use domestic visual culture in conjunction with new media practices to confront faulty assumptions about Africa, poverty, and illness.  My analysis of Sudden Flowers will serve to instruct new media projects in creatively broadcast the perspectives of people in situations of need to the policy makers, aid organizations, and foundations that are crafting solutions.

Sudden Flowers is a collective of eighteen young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty who have benefited from the services of Hope for Children (HFC).  HFC houses and educates eight hundred children who have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.  Sudden Flowers formed to produce video interviews where the youth personally tell international donors how they benefited from HFC’s programs. Over the past three years, the video interviews have evolved into award-winning short films.  With the guidance of two program directors, the youth write, direct, and act in semi-autobiographic films about their troubled pasts on the streets of Addis Ababa.  According to UNICEF, most of Ethiopia’s one million HIV/AIDS orphans end up living on the streets, suffering physical and emotional abuse as they beg or work in prostitution in order to survive.

I plan to evaluate the historical and social influences on Sudden Flowers’ work from three contexts.  First, the domestic influence of Ethiopia’s longstanding theater tradition has infused the culture with sophisticated notions of performance and narrative. It is my hypothesis that this tradition explains the rapid development of the video work from direct appeals for funding to collaboratively produced stories drawn from local narrative traditions.  Second, international news coverage of Ethiopia’s famine in 1984 asserted a distinctive image of poverty and deprivation that has been recycled through the media ever since.   I will assess the effectiveness of Sudden Flowers’ efforts to overcome the limited international visual narrative of depravation in order to represent the fullness of their lives as including but not limited to suffering.  Third, human rights organizations are eagerly adopting new media practices as access to production tools becomes more affordable and distribution through the internet reaches increasingly wider audiences.  I will demonstrate that the strength of Sudden Flowers’ work as compared to other grassroots media projects is a result of the collective’s multifaceted skills development program and collaborative production strategies. An analysis of these three contexts will elucidate the intersection of Ethiopian and international influences in the collective’s work.  It will also serve as a blueprint for other organizations seeking to draw from local visual culture to produce digital media that speaks to international audiences about salient human rights issues.

The grant period is an ideal time to conduct this analysis for two reasons.  First, domestic film production has taken off in the past few years, bringing significant changes to Ethiopia’s popular visual landscape.   Domestic films attract nearly as wide an audience as foreign films and challenge the traditional live theater arts for which Ethiopia is famous. I will study the impact of emerging domestic film on Sudden Flowers’ work and the collective’s changing distribution strategies given new opportunities to screen their films for local audiences.  Second, the Ethiopian legislature is considering placing rigid limitations on the way non-governmental organizations (NGOs) raise funds. This legislation is a reaction to the efforts of international NGOs to challenge the dominant political party in the most recent election.  In response, Sudden Flowers is exploring social entrepreneurship in the form of consulting and product sales as means of funding their projects.  Foundations like Ashoka, Echoing Green, and the MacArthur Foundation are supporting the global trend for social entrepreneurship, which uses for-profit business models to run development and human rights projects.  The grant period will afford me an opportunity to chronicle Sudden Flower’s application of social entrepreneurship in the effort to continue expanding their programs amid Ethiopia’s politicized aid climate.

I spent two weeks in Addis Ababa this past summer getting to know the collective and confirming the rich possibilities of pursuing more extensive research.  To date, my proposed project has generated interest among professors in several academic departments at Addis Ababa University, telecommunications innovators with extensive involvement in Ethiopia, and former staff of the office of the General Secretary of the United Nations. Before arriving in Ethiopia, I will study the local language, Amharic, through a private tutor and continue language classes upon arriving in the country. Amharic will aid me in my work, though the key administrators at Sudden Flowers and many of the youth are proficient if not fluent in English.  In Ethiopia, direct engagement with constituencies relevant to this project by auditing classes at the Communications Department of Addis Ababa University, attending film screenings, and meeting the theater community will ground the my initial observation of Sudden Flowers in the broader cultural landscape. These activities in the first four months of the grant period will afford me broad familiarity with Ethiopia’s culture and history.

The subsequent six months of the grant period will entail focused work with Sudden Flowers.  My time will be devoted to observing their film production and organizational operations as well as interviewing the collective’s members.  I plan to teach technical classes in photography and video production as an immediate way to enrich the project.  Sudden Flowers has also solicited my input in developing their website and training tools, work that will directly benefit from my formal research on their projects.  Maintaining my blog throughout the grant period will keep my colleagues and interested media analysts abreast on my progress and help generate interest in publishing the findings more formally.   I will deliver a talk on my work at Addis Ababa University and provide Sudden Flowers with full access to the final case study reports.  After the grant period, I hope to collaborate with the collective in the long term to keep its strategies current in the evolving media environment.  Upon my return to the United States, I will present my work at the New School University through a public lecture and exhibition.

Gaining an intimate understanding of Sudden Flower’s collaborative production process and business model will advance my professional development as a media consultant and producer for human rights projects. After the grant period, I will work in a human rights organization before beginning graduate studies in international affairs.  If awarded the Fulbright grant, my work with Sudden Flowers will form the foundation of my career in producing field analysis of the global media landscape and influencing policy on the human right to information and self-expression.  Analysis of projects like Sudden Flowers will equip grassroots organizations enthusiastically embracing new media tools with proven methods for amplifying the stories of those who stand to gain the most from effective human rights policies.

PERSONAL STATEMENT
Ida C. Benedetto, Ethiopia, Communications|4290
Sudden Flowers: A Case Study in New Media and Visual Culture for Human Rights
As a passionate advocate for visual media’s ability to shape the stories that conceptualize our world, I have immersed myself in the field of documentary photography and digital technology. I use these new media tools to inspire empathy and promote conscientious engagement with issues of global import.

My first mentor was Andrew Stern, a photojournalist who produced one of the initial photography essays on Iraq war veterans.  He noticed my enthusiasm for photography’s ability to instantly communicate emotional nuances and encouraged me to explore a career in visual media.  Traveling to Guatemala to learn Spanish, I became further interested in social justice and post-conflict issues.  My language school organized a trip to a community of ex-guerrillas who farm fair trade coffee.  I was inspired by their commitment to defend their culture and to rebuild their lives after the civil war.

Upon returning to the United States, I enrolled at the New School University to study liberal arts and design under the dual BA/BFA program. I am studying History and Design&Technology. My courses teach me about the historical roots of economic and social inequities and digital communication’s potential in motivating audiences to address these issues.  During my first winter vacation from school, I returned to Guatemala to produce a documentary photograph essay on the community of ex-guerrilla coffee farmers.  I have returned to Guatemala four more times to continue working with the community and local organizations on development projects.  With the support of my history advisor, I secured a grant from the India China Institute at the New School to work with tea farmers in India.  In the hills of Darjeeling, I found a unique cooperative that celebrates their ethnic identity and participation in local politics.  When I showed the tea farmers photographs of the Guatemalan coffee farmers, they were fascinated and inspired. We turned the photographs into postcards so the farmers could exchange letters.  This experience helped me discover the power of collaboration to produce moving visual media projects.  The postcards are now an exhibition that will tour ten cities in the United States thanks to fair trade supporters.

I have worked in photographic arts institutions and a foundation to understand the organizations providing vital resources to media producers. The opportunity to do graduate level work in Human Rights and Media in Brazil introduced me to the values that facilitate a culture of human rights media production. While interning at the Open Society Institute, I was inspired by the work of photographer Eric Gottesman. I got in touch with Mr. Gottesman to discuss his use of Ethiopia’s coffee ceremony as a setting for his photographs to provoke discussion about AIDS.  He invited me to visit Sudden Flowers, an organization he helped found in Ethiopia. The wit and vivacity of the youth in this video collective defied all my stereotypes of African AIDS orphans. In contrast to the farmers of Guatemala and India, they took their story into their own hands through collaborative video production. I began analyzing their work and offered support through technical trainings.

While usually seen as a disability, dyslexia is the source of my strengths in lateral thinking, interpersonal skills, and visual literacy. Years in educational environments poorly suited for my learning style taught me to independently seek out means to meet my goals. This drive has taken me around the world to work with people finding creative solutions within systems that have overlooked their needs. I am committed to a career in visual media to continue deploying these skills in the service of intercultural understanding and human rights.