VIDEO REPORT
UNICEF, Innovations for Child Health in Uganda
UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) creates videos and publishes photos as part of its ongoing effort to raise awareness about children’s issues worldwide and provide humanitarian assistance. This video, produced in 2013, focuses on modest technological innovations, such as text messaging, that are improving healthcare and saving the lives of children in Uganda.
Source: UNICEF WeShare
Reading the Genre
1. Consider how the genre and content work together in this piece. Is this video format more appropriate for a report than a traditional newspaper article? What does the video offer that a written report cannot?
2. This report is about Uganda, a country with unique healthcare, communication, and transportation challenges. How do the directors make this report compelling to an audience outside this area? Could they do a better job appealing to audiences who have never experienced a shortage of medical care?
3. Make a list of the key speakers in the video, and next to your list, write down each speaker’s role and stake in the issue of Ugandan children’s health. What perspectives, if any, would you say are missing from the video? What other voices or sources of information would be suitable for a video report?
4. WRITING: Watch the Innovations for Child Health in Uganda video with pen and paper in hand, and record key quotes from the speakers featured. If you need to, pause and restart the video as you go. Then develop your own short report using these key quotes as evidence, yet relating these points to healthcare-related innovations in another part of the world. (Consider how a successful innovation in, for instance, Haiti may or may not work as well in Uganda.) This will require you to pair the research you pull from the video with your own secondary research.
5. BROCHURE: After viewing the Innovations for Child Health in Uganda video, create an informational brochure about one of the technological innovations described in the video. Design the brochure utilizing images, fonts, and a layout that presents the technology creatively. (You might use the dropbox feature in LaunchPad to submit your brochure to your instructor.)