Engaging with global bodies such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and private corporations, Canadian Daphne Nederhorst is combating extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries by supporting local champions (Sawa Heroes), giving them the tools to spread and scale their successful initiatives to surrounding communities that also endure extreme poverty. The local media partners are getting first hand knowledge about locally designed poverty reduction strategies in that area. She has actually trained youth videographers in 11 target countries in videography and journalistic skills in order to profile the stories of Heroes in local communities, news sources and on the international Sawa website.
Sawa Heroes are individuals that have created their own successful solutions to extreme poverty with no or very little outside support, and create positive and long-term impact to reduce extreme poverty in their communities. Their aim is to develop financial models that will provide permanent and locally generated funding to support the expansion of their projects in order to reach 50 of the worlds’ poorest countries and 1 billion people that live in extreme poverty. The poorest countries in the world share similar challenges related to basic human needs such as malnutrition, health, and environmental issues. Several grassroots citizen sector organizations are borne locally out of the need to address these problems in some of the most dangerous and challenging areas of the world. Daphne uses video story telling to connect local activists to the rest of the world and provide them with the resources they need to make changes on a larger scale. After completing university degrees in film-making, engineering, and international development, Daphne realized that these seemingly disparate choices came together to form a solution to extreme poverty.
Website: http://www.sawaworld.org/
