TIE : The International Exchange

A Developing Story is a brilliant idea, and more people need to know about them; especially those of you in the worlds of development and communications.  In short, they bring together and promote multimedia from and about the developing world. From professionally produced campaign work, to user-generated Flickr photosets, podcasts and written testimony, the site is designed to help these stories reach new audiences as well as creating, over time, a categorised archive for those working in international development to use for reference and inspiration.

These guys believe that all Government funded communications for use in international development should be available in a central, easily accessible database under Creative Commons licenses. A database where photographs, posters, scripts, public information leaflets, etc, can be downloaded, copied, translated and adapted for local audiences, saving practitioners time and money and therefore ultimately saving lives.

However, at the moment, almost none of this material is available in the public domain. A public health campaign about the risks of HIV is run in South Africa, for example, but the artwork and radio scripts aren’t available to someone doing the same thing in Malawi six months later. And that’s what they want to change.

You can learn more about their approach here.