What Water Can Do: Seeing and Showing

We live in a world where 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean, safe drinking water. And despite the fact that this kills over 5 million people a year, it seems that much of the West has no idea. I want to show them.

The Need:
4,500 children die each day because of unsafe drinking water. 80% of the world's hospital beds are filled with patients whose problems wouldn't exist but for the lack of safe water. And yet the modern world doesn't seem to know these people exist. We need to show them.

Stage 1: Going to Africa
Working with an organization called Water Is Life International, I would go to southern Ethiopia, a country in which over 59 million people, mostly women and children, spend hours walking and carrying filthy, disgusting water for their drinking/cooking needs. Over a period of 1-2 weeks, we will complete the drilling and installation of a well, sustainable for 10-20 years for 250+ people. Then we'll do it again.
In each village my goal will be to capture first the emotional and physical condition of the people from an involved perspective. What is their daily life like? I want to be able to put the camera in their shoes, as well as in mine. I would focus on the village at large, an individual family, and a specific person. Secondly, I'll document firsthand the drilling process. Thirdly, I will return and again spend time with the villages, and record the turn about that takes place because of clean water.

Stage 2: Create the show
I will return to the States to compile/edit the images and create visualizations. Working with musicians and software developers, we would create a cutting-edge multimedia performance to tell the story. Projector screens on stage and custom visualization software utilizing the footage from Ethiopia will combine and interact with live musicians to draw the audience into the narrative, and humanize the "least of these."
One cool side caveat: The software will be interactive and making decisions about what photos and visual effects to use, based on the music the computer is hearing. This will enable each performance to be unique, and enable the visual storytelling to be an active participant and performer interacting with the musicians.

Stage 3: Perform
The goal of the performance, as the culmination of the project, is to raise awareness and funding for wells and sanitation projects, primarily in Africa, but also in South American and Asia.
It would be performed in churches, universities, highschools, concert venues anywhere in the world, as well as placed in video form on the internet. The software involved in the project would be made available to the general public for use in similar projects.
We would also release a photojournal from the trip, with proceeds from it donated directly to drilling wells in Africa.

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