An overview of the roadmap travelled by the Mectizan Donation Program in its decades-long fight to eliminate onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis. Through the ongoing donation of Mectizan, communities who would otherwise have been ravaged by these debilitating neglected tropical diseases have seen lives changed through the simple administration of a yearly dose of much-needed medicine.

The fight to eradicate these crippling diseases goes on, and is being fought by the MDP and its partner organisations at a global level, as well as on the ground through community networks. Together, their aim is to achieve the aims of the WHO’s 2021-2030 NTD Roadmap Goals.

This is a longer Flying Start film used by British Airways internally to raise awareness for their massive fundraising mechanism, off the back of the in-flight film that is currently running on all long-haul flights.

For this film we went for life through the eyes of three British Airways cabin crew, and the two projects they visited in Sheffield and Johannesburg.

Seeing the world of others through the eyes of passionate champions for the brand is a great formula to share experiences and get people thinking along the same lines.

With the growing popularity of Audiobooks, Penguin Random House (PRH) wanted to showcase the quality of the craft and effort that goes into make an audiobook. The brief was to give the viewer an inside look ‘behind the curtain’ and showcase the production process.

Shown at the annual conference showcasing the departments achievements the video was received so well it was marked as the highlight of the conference by the CEO of PRH.

Getting people to stand up and take action is at the core of the Mectizan Donation Program‘s remit – especially when the intended audience are Ministers of Health in African countries. This is the first of a series of films intended to get key influencers to commit to putting their name to a 30 year-long elimination programme – ridding Africa of River Blindness or onchocerciasis. If we work together we can stamp out oncho!

We used a local fixer to go in search of stories that were set up in advance of our shooting producer director’s arrival. We then worked with a wonderful local photographer and camera assistant to create a more integrated team and integrate more in to remote and challenging settings.

It started off a relationship with Cameroon and Nigeria that continues to this day, adding to the list of the many African countries that we have ties with.

As part of our long-standing relationship with British Airways’ Community Investment team we spent time in Durban, South Africa, with Tom Hewitt and his crew of ex-street kids now-surfing professionals known as Surfers Not Street Children.

Apart from their partnership with Comic Relief, British Airways offer annual bursaries to individual projects around the world that they feel are providing long-term sustainable development to the community. Durban has a long history of homelessness and street crime, so a surfing project that engages young kids and give them some life-changing guidance can make a huge impact.

Once we actually managed to get all the kids in the same place at the same time (“it’s like herding cats” said Tom in despair) hanging out with these bright enthusiastic young guys was the highlight – you could feel the energy coming from them, all buzzing from the experience of surfing and being filmed. One even requested a coffee with seven sugars which probably contributed to the general energy level.

Cloud9Media spent an action-packed week in Western Uganda to create video and photographic coverage for TV presenter Charlie Webster’s trip as she saw with her own eyes the impact of malaria – and come to terms with a fatal disease that she caught herself two years ago when cycling to the Rio Olympics in 2016.

Using archival shots taken from Charlie’s broadcast career and stills of her hospitalisation, our team combined these with our own footage to show the background of Charlie’s journey. The result is a short film that captured the challenges she and other sufferers of malaria face, and how there is hope for the elimination of malaria. 

As part of our ongoing relationship with Marriott International, we were commissioned to create this film around Ruksana, a young woman who went from wondering what to do with limited opportunities, to a highly successful career through the World of Opportunity program with Marriott and Prince’s Trust.

As a champion of equal opportunities and young people, Marriott came to us directly to bring Ruksana’s empowering story to life, through our compassionate and people-focused story-telling.

We produced a longer film for their intranet and a 1-minute version for Instagram.

In the latest of our ongoing relationship with British Airways and Comic Relief, this time we took our cameras to a baby club in the outskirts of Cape Town, to se how Flying Start helps provide the best start in life for mothers living with HIV and their little ones.

All storyboards go out the window when faced with toddlers on the loose; that energy was manifest in the film!

Sightsavers had originally wanted to invite three community medicine distributors form around Africa to speak at the launch of the Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases Declaration, at the Natural History Museum in London, with the WHO and Gates Foundation amongst the delegates they wanted to communicate the success stories on the ground. However getting visas in such a short space of time ruled this out.

Wrangling with customs officers, visas and hugely long car journeys we filmed in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia over 10 days, where we travelled to the remotest regions to hear these people’s stories.

Hosted by Sightsavers and attended by over 200 people from across the pharma, donor and NGO sectors including the Gates Foundation and World Health Organisation, the film was used to launch a discussion on the importance of attaining the WHO 2020 goals for Neglected Tropical Diseases.

On the 13th December 2017 the billionth treatment for neglected tropical diseases was celebrated across the world.

Sightsavers hosted events in Cambridge, UK and Abuja, Nigeria as well as distributing a powerful film we made on the backstory of river blindness in 7 other countries. We focussed on three characters in the film, a blind grandfather, his sighted daughter and a community drug distributor, the life-line of mass drug administrations that have been happening across the world for the past 7 years.

We provided not only the film but a live-stream between Cambridge and Abuja allowing the minister of health to talk to delegates in the UK and giving them a chance to meet the community drug distributor live on screen. We also covered the event itself to share with stakeholders, marking a truly global day in the fight against NTDs and in celebration of effective collaboration between parties across the world.