Video Journalism in the Wake of Disaster

I was hired by an international video journalist agency to do video journalism work for three German international aid agencies that wanted fundraising and marketing videos produced about their emergency relief work in Haiti. I arrived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 15 days after the earthquake and took a bus from there to Port-au-Prince; a ride that took about 11 hours.

The closer the bus got to Port-au-Prince, the more evident the earthquake damage. Whole sections of the city were ravaged, especially around the city center and the west part of town. People were living in tents and lean-tos outside their homes and next to the streets because they did not trust the stability of buildings. All available open spaces in the city had become refugee camps.

My first assignment was to film the relief work of ADRA, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency. ADRA provided shelter, food, clean water, and built latrines for 30,000 people living in the camp on the grounds of the Adventist University in Carrefour, a neighborhood badly destroyed by the quake. The University was also the staging point for their relief efforts elsewhere in the city. Near the University, at the Adventist Hospital, ADRA had set up inflatable field hospitals and managed logistics, supplies, and medical volunteers.

The following day I filmed the work of Kindernothilfe (German for Children’s Emergency Help) at College Verena, a Salvation Army school in the Saint Martin neighborhood. This area was largely demolished by the quake, including the main buildings of the school. Kindernothilfe provided food, clean water, medical and psychiatric care, and educational supplies to the children of the neighborhood.

My last assignment was to film the medical relief clinic established by Malteser International in Léogâne, the epicenter of the quake. Almost 95% of the town was destroyed. Here, Malteser provided basic medical care, including obstetrical care, to about 250 people a day. They plan to develop a permanent ambulatory care center at this site, as well as in Darbonne, a village close to Léogâne.

Everywhere I went Haitian people talked about a desperate need for tents, food, water, medical supplies, and the desire to find work.  The aid agency personnel I worked with spoke of a high volunteer response, but were concerned that Haiti would soon fall out of the focus of news agencies and the media.  Reaching out to people via web videos posted on the agencies’ home sites, YouTube, and Vimeo, as well as being shown at fundraising events, the aid organizations hope that the videos would appeal to a wide audience for donations and also keep images of the devastation in the minds of people looking to help for longer than the media cycle would allow.