———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Teri
Date: Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 4:25 AM
Subject: Democracy Is…Video Challenge Winner
To:

Hello,

It started out with an email from Subel, a short note saying: Would you guys be interested in it?? Going through the forwarded message I realized it was a competition to complete the phrase Democracy Is… It called on budding filmmakers, democracy advocates and the general public to create short videos that would complete the phrase. I’m not an advocate but yes I am interested in filmmaking however I’m yet to even consider myself an amateur. So as a member of the ‘general public’ I put my views across as to what Democracy means to me, which is clearly portrayed in the video – nothing abstract or intelligent – it is what it is and it is the way I perceive it.

It is true that hard work pays off and I can claim this victory for myself but that’s not quite the story. The product you see wouldn’t have been half as good if it wasn’t for the contribution of everyone involved. From Yanik sharing his creative ideas and suggestions, Gagan Thapa, Anil Chitrakar and Viplob Pratik giving their precious time and sharing their insight, Pravat and Bipra accompanying me as I rolled tape after tape to be able to create the time lapse, Srijan going out on the streets to get the audio bytes, Pravat again working on the audio (post-production), learning to edit the video with Vikash closely guiding me, lyrical prowess and performance from Yanik and Subba, translation by Vikash to the catchy tune composed by Pravin Chettri. With a team like that, it’s hard not to emerge victorious. In my opinion I was working with the best so the results were bound to be an extension of that.

But the hurdles kept coming and soon it was the most dreaded phase of the competition – votes. This was something that I had no control over. The make it break it phase of the competition had arrived and it was now pretty much up to the people to decide – the fundamentals of Democracy. While we were confident about the video we knew that that wouldn’t be the deciding factor. So we got online and began soliciting votes by sending out emails to everybody we knew and beyond. Knowing that would not be enough friends got on Facebook and started linking the video, creating groups, generating more publicity. My sister wasn’t going to sit around and hope for the votes to come in. She campaigned strong and hard. On my sister’s advice my mother took the drive further and went out on the streets distributing pamphlets with instructions on “How To Vote”. Gradually the media took attention too and the views on Vikash’s youtube account started growing. It has now crossed 10K. We were not sure if that was any inkling that the video was getting as many votes.

The results are out and we won, taking over the likes of India and Uzbekistan…reminds me of the story of David and Goliath. Your votes did count and I would like to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU. Your support has been overwhelming and humbling.

I wish I could thank every person who voted personally, I really do, but I guess that’s not possible however I would request you to forward this to all you know and all who voted. You didn’t have to but you did and because you did Nepal is on the map. Many many thanks.

T