It's the story of a travel. From Europe, we went to Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and South America, to cover projects of international cooperation.
From the original topic assigned to us, the MDG programme, we went on to search why mainstream media finds it so difficult to cover activities of peacebuilding.
We collected stories on the work in progress for reducing extreme poverty, promoting basic education, empowering women, reducing the child mortality, improving maternal health, fighting against epidemics, protecting the environment, and promoting fair relationship amongst nations.
We shared these stories on the Internet but we wanted them to be broadcast on television. So, we interviewed policy makers and we shared with them the story of our effort to narrate how different people are rediscovering their own values by learning to appreciate the values of others.
It was a difficult journey. We had to overcome media stereotypes of “bad news is news that sells”. We had to bring on board editors that are usually keen on aligning with established prejudices among public, because they sell audiences to advertisers, not awareness to audiences.
We had to redefine communication as something that isn’t an exchange of preconceived notions but is a new creation that breaks the isolation of people, enables "participation" and builds a sense of "community".
In this journey, what we really learned was that development cannot be "given" in the same way that education cannot be “delivered” and participation cannot be “bought”. We learned that development is a process that requires communication and cooperation; that this is possible only as far as counterparts act in a reciprocally empowering manner, because they recognize that, in order to fully realize themselves, they need the self-realization of the others.
Now, we would like to share this journey with you; because this is where we wanted to arrive when we started it.
Millions of children die because of the lack of care and exclusion. The MDG 4 deals with decreasing the death rates of children under-five while improving their nutrition and access to vaccinations and basic health services;