- Jessica Mayberry

My partner Stalin and I are seated in the video laboratory of VCU.br in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with VV’s nine Video Fellows. We’re conducting a workshop in an area that is new for us – and which appears to be new also for the whole field of “base of the pyramid business ventures,” which is entrepreneurship in the creative field of video. Our purpose in our new program here in Sao Paulo (described elsewhere) is to create “video entrepreneurs,” and this blog here is a snapshot of one of the exercises we did while we were in Sao Paulo for the month of October.

The nine young people are all from favela/periphery areas of Sao Paulo, and on this day, we are doing a workshop on how to market yourself to clients.

One young man starts to read aloud: “My name is Allan Jones, I'm 24 years old and lives in Guarulhos municipality of São Paulo State. My parents were born in the Amazon. My mother works as a seamstress and my father, I do not know who he is. I graduated high school only last year because the work I had to do did not allow me to study. I've worked in several areas, including as an installer of air conditioning and around this time I had the opportunity to meet several theaters and see many shows. It was there that sparked my desire to work with theater and learn video. Today I'm part of the project VCU.br which is about how young people can work as independent videomakers, and I want to work in the area of script and production. I’m making a video about community theater in my area: my video tells the story of Mrs. Santa Catarina, an independent artist. She is self-taught and without resources or support, but yet manages to run a theater workshop in the community of Vila Isabel, in Guarulhos.”

Video Entrepreneurs from Communities – turning disadvantages into advantages
The primary purpose of the exercise is to teach the young people to write compelling video proposals for different clients. But the deeper purpose is to teach them to turn their disadvantages into advantages, and to inspire others to see it that way. If they are going to go into the market and compete with the so-called “professionals” they must be able to communicate to clients the value of their perspectives as community members. Why? Because their personal perspective, as people who live close to the stories they are telling, is the only thing they have which a professional does not. The problem is, they themselves have spent so long hiding the fact that they are from the disadvantaged parts of the city, that they are reluctant to write about it.

The personal narratives they eventually write reveal much about the forces that hold the poor back in the big cities of emerging markets like Rio, Sao Paulo or Mumbai: the massive distances the poor have to travel from their homes to work in the city centers, and the high costs of public transportation; the need to support their families financially, incredibly poor public schools, and –the one they keep repeating – no professional contacts. For one of them, a kind word from a TV reporter covering a story in his favela when he was 16, whom he got up the courage to approach on the street for advice and who gave him good tips on breaking into television news, was a turning point that gave him the conviction to develop a career in media. Compare that to the 101 pieces of career advice that a privileged young person will receive by the time she is 21. Is it any wonder our Fellows seem a little incredulous when we tell them that their backgrounds are in fact a strength?

As the days go by, the Fellows learn the step-by-step process of managing an independent video business, from identifying clients, writing proposals, creating a budget and a rate sheet, and “closing the deal.” But really, they are learning to tell and celebrate their personal stories, and find the personal connection to their work that makes all work meaningful. We tell them how they need to dig deep inside themselves to find this. Being an entrepreneur, ultimately, is about finding your personal power and confidence and belief in yourself and your ideas. Even if they send the most intense favela story to a television producer, that TV producer will always have the option of sending his own more “professional” freelancers to cover it. They need to learn to convince people that they have something these professionals don’t, a perspective that will be enlightening to their audience.

After a couple of hours of them slightly struggling to “get” this, one girl jumps up.
She is Beatrice, a beautiful and lively girl with hair that has gone in the three weeks we’ve been here from extension corn braids, to a Nefertiti-style tall wrap, to, finally, a beautiful and fully disco Afro: “I see! It’s because we live there that we’re unique!” “That’s it!” Everyone says, and from there, they start making the connections more easily.

One girl, Layla, used to work handing out fliers on the street. She knows what it’s like to feel invisible on the street and have people walk right by you when you try to get their attention, and that’s why she can tell an interesting story about street artists who also have to fight for the acknowledge of passersby.
Another girl, Juliet, is the right person to tell a story of schizophrenia because her brother is schizophrenic.

A third person feels inspired to tell the stories of stray and injured animals because he used to see so many dogs getting run over when he was working as a delivery car driver. This was just one exercise, but the process, I think, is key to the whole idea of community video as a social venture for the poor. Community producers need to be their own agents in terms of convincing the “market” of the value of their own background in a favela or village or slum, and that means not just having self expression – a voice – but also self-reflection, and a large degree of self-awareness.

Identifying Entrepreneurs
Going into this project, one of our concerns was, would we be able to find people who were entrepreneurial and who would want to run their own video business, as opposed to having a less satisfying career but one that guarantees work? Because we had our doubts as to whether entrepreneurship could be taught. Business skills are easy to teach, but personal drive or motivation is another thing. Not everyone is an entrepreneur. If we were to tell our staff one day, “from today onwards, no one is getting monthly checks but instead everyone needs to earn their own salary,” most people would quit. But yet, that is what many people in the NGO sector expect the poor to do.
But as we see the Producers personal business plans develop, we are convinced that these were the right people. All
are committed to a career in video; all are committed to developing their own creativity and to working for their communities. Rafael is already writing proposals to the government to create video projects in the slums. Luana is pursuing internships with TV stations they’ve connected with during the project. Says Layla: “my experience in VCU.br is so good and the other Video Producers are such interesting people. Next year, I hope we’ll get together to make some production companies. I want to really go ahead with videos, and I think I also have the capacity for fiction too. I don’t want everyone here to go off on their own and leave the group, so I’m thinking about how to make the idea of a group production company happen. Some of us love to write, some like to produce, others to edit. For me we have a production company right here.” Stalin and I are convinced, as we always are with our community producers, of one thing: there is so much latent talent and knowledge out in the world that is untapped, and we need to start tapping into it. When you give people opportunities, and you help them find their voice, there is no end to what they can achieve