AYAD Documentary
Whether it’s cycling through the crazy traffic in Hanoi, Vietnam or trekking through calf deep mud in Bangladesh, there’s been no shortage of adventures for the documentary crew following some of our AYADs around in their daily lives.
The documentary crew from The Production Hub has been working closely with the AYAD Program and AusAID to capture the experiences of our AYADs as they go about their assignments in locations across the Asia Pacific.
The first challenge for the team was trying to narrow down the options to 5 or 6 AYADs in five countries across the region. The crew knew they couldn’t do justice to any more than that in a one hour documentary and there has been lots of wishful thinking about a great AYAD mini-series as the team tried to choose who would feature in the documentary.
With so many great projects to choose from in such a diverse range of sectors and with AYADs coming from so many different backgrounds there was a wealth of great stories waiting to be told. It was a real struggle to choose which countries from our twenty partner countries we would film in let alone which AYADs would make the final round.
Finally, decisions were made and the crew got down to the fun logistics of carrying lots of expensive, and heavy, camera gear through Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Samoa.
The Doco crew started their AYAD adventure in Papua New Guinea where they headed out to Alotau to film AYADs Christian James and Kylee St George, both working with St. Barnabas School of Nursing. Beautiful Alotau was a fantastic setting to follow the work of these two nurse trainers and their counterparts and to get a taste for the warmth and friendliness of the local people who had welcomed Christian and Kylee, and now the Doco crew, into their lives.
After a brief return to Australia they headed out again, this time to Hanoi, Vietnam where the crew followed AYAD Tam Tran, a Vietnamese Australian working with Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. Tam is working as a Social Work Trainer with Blue Dragon focusing particularly on street kids and other disadvantaged young people. The Doco crew had an amazing, and humbling experience, meeting the exuberant Tan, a ten-year-old boy whose cerebral palsy has left him unable to walk.
Tan is a bright, happy, cheeky boy. When asked whether he was happy to have the Doco crew visit his home he immediately started discussing his imminent stardom and whether the crew should provide a limo. The irony of these comments was clear given the extreme poverty of his family and the complete lack of access to their home by any motorized transport. In one of the simple bamboo rooms on the boat Tan calls home, the Doco crew saw a loving, caring family looking for ways to provide their son with access to education and a better life. It is a two kilometre walk over narrow, muddy trails from the riverbank to the nearest road but now a couple of times each week, Tan’s mother or his social worker from Blue Dragon, carry Tan from his home to the road and another 3 km to the Blue Dragon drop-in centre where he has a wheelchair and access to education, art, computers and his peers.
After Hanoi it was on to Bangladesh and AYAD Pierre Johanessen, working with Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity is an international NGO working to provide the world’s most disadvantaged people with access to housing.
Habitat for Humanity Bangladesh’s National Director, Kelly Koch, explained why housing is so much more than just a roof over your head:
“It provides families with a safe place to live but it also makes sure that families live in a healthy environment. It gives peoplea sense of security in the community. The children have a place to study, they have a place to play, they have the opportunity to socially interact with their friends and the community.”
Pierre has been working with Habitat for Humanity to improve their communications and fundraising practices in order to better support the core role of Habitat for Humanity in the community. The role is based in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh but also requires visits to some of the remote villages where Habitat works in the field. It’s one of these visits that producer, Matthew Fallon, remembers as his best experience so far on the AYAD documentary project:
“We were walking through calf deep mud in Bangladesh, loaded up with all the gear. That was pretty full on. It was only 2 km or so but it really brought home that this was the path local villagers walked daily to get to the main road, to access markets and the outside world. We were only there for a day so for us it was an adventure but it’s different living there. But you definitely knew you were making a film about real life in the world when half of the world’s mud was caked up your legs.’
Next stop, Indonesia, and a change of pace for the Doco crew who filmed newly arrived AYAD, Alice Moffett, as she settled in to her new home and her new work at the Greenhands Permaculture school in the hills of Aceh.
“It was important to try and get as many different AYAD perspectives as possible,” said Matthew, “we wanted to be able to show what it was like living in a developing country both from a ‘fresh eyes’ perspective and from the perspective of someone who has lived their for a fair while. Working with Alice was a great opportunity to get a feel for what it means to be newly arrived as an AYAD and Aceh was a fantastic place to share this experience.”
Laidback cameraman, Geoff Ellis, also acquired his new nickname ‘Mr. Goof’ in Aceh, where the local hotel owner misread the English ‘eo’ in his name. It turned out to be a good sign of the welcoming, friendly and positive people of Aceh.
“People were really open to us filming. They wanted to know what we were doing. At one site an Acehnese man came up and started talking to Chris, our director, about the tsunami and how it affected him and how Aceh is changing,” says Matthew, “It was incredible to have such open and honest encounters with the local people.”
The Doco crew were amazed to see the changes that a few years have wrought in what was one of the areas most devastated by the tsunami.
The final stop for the documentary is Samoa where AYAD Tina Macumber is working on a cricket development project. And post Samoa? It’s back to the editing suite and time to turn hours and hours of footage into a one hour documentary that demonstrates the passion, devotion, strength, enthusiasm and good humour that our AYADs bring to their work across the region. It’s no easy task but with such great material to work with the documentary is sure to be a winner.
Documentary producer, Matthew Fallon, says:
“The opportunity to see so many countries and spend time with the AYADs is one of the best things about filming this documentary. They know so much about the place and you get such privileged access to their lives and the lives that they’ve touched. That’s been the most amazing thing for me.”
To view the AYAD Documentary 'No Ordinary Journey' click here