MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING
Media Part
Preamble
Sport and media are engaging tools for development and peace building.
Sport can bring people together and is attractive content.
Media, and especially TV, today still are the most efficient platforms for visibility. “Bridging the Worlds – Football & Media” shall use both as tools for development and peace in a very practical way.
By sport, youth from different areas, different social layers, different ethnicities, different cultures shall experience the possibility and the opportunities of meeting each other, doing sport with each other, running for common aims and developing common values.
By media production, film work with light equipment, youth from different layers, ethnicities, cultures (countries and continents) can tell each other their stories and share mutual experiences.
By educational activities within and outside schools, youth from different worlds shall enter the world of mutual knowledge in order to better understand each other on the basis of values in education.
Goals in particular include improving media, social and physical skills, capacity building and strengthening values in education while using football and media as tools for cultural exchange and social integration.
The Alexandra Project
In a first stage, football and media bridges the worlds of youth of different neighbourhoods in Alexandra and Sandton.
In a second stage, “The Alexandra Project” shall serve as an example of encounters between different layers, ethnicities, cultures from different countries and continents by media first and, as an ideal aim, by real meetings (for training camps, visits etc.) of those youth involved in that sport and media activity.
The African Legacy Program connected to the outstanding event of the 2010 FIFA World Cup is a singular chance, to connect “The Alexandra Project” with the worldwide movement of sport – and football in particular – as a powerful tool for development and peace.
Local Focus, Worldwide Spread
"Bridging The Worlds" is connecting a global media network of producers of national TV for youth (preschool, children, preteens, teens) with a global network of sports organizations.
Media partners involved are:
• the Basel_Karlsruhe Forum on Educational and Societal Media (bringing media producers, educators, youth and local audiences together)
- worldwide networks of broadcasters (gathering in organizations such as EBU-Europe, ALA-Latin America, ABU-Asia, AUB-Africa.
Sports partners involved are:
• worldwide acting sports projects organizers, such as SCORT-Liechtenstein, Play Football Africa, Little Champs.
Goals of the media cooperation
A. TV-SHORTS
Each participating media partner produces 4 TV-shorts a year for the cooperation.
Those shorts-shorts are produced by and targeted at youth 10-15 years (U16).
The Supervising Producer will control and stimulate the quality of the series.
The broadcasting rights (terrestrial-digital-internet-mobile) of these shorts-shorts are cleared for exchanging with the other media partners, so the partners can also broadcast these shorts-shorts in their countries.
And the broadcasting rights (terrestrial-digital-internet-mobile) of these shorts-shorts are cleared for international sales.
Thus each participant will have the right to broadcast all the items in its national language on these platforms.
The exploitation rights will not be transferred, but the Project Management will support the international sales of the shorts-shorts as a series-series.
[With ten participants, we create a series of 40 x 3'-4' a year, which could become a weekly programme in a TV season]
By doing so we are:
- coproducing an international TV series
- building a global collection for broadcasting of short TV programs for youth U16, expressing themselves in football and media
- developing media skills of youth U16
- developing social and physical skills of youth U16
- using football and media as a tool for integration, cultural exchange and values in education
The short TV programs can be used by the participating media partner:
- as part of a TV magazine
- as a short TV program
- as stock material
- as a filler
Content:
We will work with some common creative agreements:
- each shorts-shorts always shows a mix of boys and girls, a mix of cultural backgrounds
- there is a limited use of one voice narration
- it’s visual storytelling, no lip-sync dialogue as part of the storytelling
Further we agree on full freedom of creativity, we will exchange ideas about specific questions to be answered in the shots-shots, in order to facilitate exchange and mutual access for different audiences to a similar content.
Those questions now are:
- Show us, how you are going to be a football champion
- Show, how football does affect your social life: with peers, at school, at home, family, girl friends/by friends
- Show, how you meet partners from other neighborhoods, social layers etc. – tell us, what you expect and (afterwards) what you experience
The content may be developed by the project partners in different stages, step by step, since the content of a short-short from here may provoke questions or answers from there etc.
Delivery of the TV-shorts:
Delivery will be directed at KRO Netherlands public broadcasting.
KRO Netherlands public broadcasting will make compilation tapes for the participants and send them to each participant.
The 4 shorts-shorts a year will be delivered in two pairs, two in October, and two in April.
Shooting material: minimum standard DVcam.
Delivery video material: on Beta or DVcam, with separate M&E track for international adaptation
Other material to be delivered: a logbook of the tape/shorts-shorts, a music cue-sheet* of the music used in the shorts-shorts, a post-production script in English, background information about the production of the shorts-shorts, publicity photo’s (minimum 2 photo’s per short-short).
* any music used in the shorts-shorts has to be delivered free of third party rights
B. VOLUNTARY OTHER AUDIOVISUAL PRODUCTIONS WITHIN THE PROJECT
Participating companies are encouraged on additional documentaries or magazine programmes/reports (for instance type of: “making of” or portrait) at particular moments of the project.
The conditions of exchange/sales/purchase/coproduction of those documentaries or similar programmes will be agreed on separately and are not part of the TV-shorts.
The GM and the Supervising Producer of Bridging The Worlds may give support to that cooperation.
C. VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION IN OTHER PROJECTS
Participating companies are encouraged to participate in other Bridging The Worlds projects, above The Alexandra Project.
New football & media projects similar to The Alexandra Project will be developed in Africa and Latin America.
The participants will be kept updated about upcoming events and possibilities of participation by the GM directly and/or through our common website.
From 2007 to the World Cup in 2010, continuous activities in sports and continuous visibility in TV are possible, with sustainability even far beyond 2010.
Agenda of special events, in line with the project:
2008: the 26th African Cup of Nations, Finals, Ghana
2009: Confederations Cup, South Africa (Johannesburg Ellis Park being one of the five stadiums)
2010: Football World Cup in South Africa
Those events, like others, may be occasions for special TV/Media productions connected to special sports events. On the timeline, "Bridging The Worlds” events shall take place a few weeks before the professional football events, and they shall have an educational purpose (see: Legacy) in terms of:
- football training and coaching weeks (SCORT)
- media training and coaching workshops
- intercultural meetings (schools and international teams etc.)
- knowledge input about each other’s countries, cultures etc.
- teambuilding and other social skills
Those activities shall be developed in cooperation with SCORT, the social responsibility departments of football clubs, NGOs and schools (together with media as far as they are able to present programmes of the kind etc.), universities and other interested and appropriate partners.
Confirmed Media Partners:
South Africa SABC, Johannesburg
Netherlands KRO, Hilversum
Italy RAI 3, Rome
Interested Media Partners:
Brazil TV Futura, Rio de Janeiro
Colombia La Citurna Producciones, Bogotá
Japan NHK Educational, Tokyo
Switzerland Filmfabrik, Zürich
Norway NRK, Oslo
Sweden SVT, Stockholm
Belgium VRT, Brussels
Current Time Schedule:
- Project Launch: june 2007
- Final Project Launch: November 2007
- First tv-shorts Production in Netherlands: november 2007
- Signing of Media Partners: december-january 2008
- Workshop at BaKaForum in Germany: january 2008
- First delivery of two TV-shorts june 2008
- End of october 2008/april 2008/october 2008/april 2009/october 2009/april 2010: Delivery of two shorts-shorts by each partner.
- Suggested broadcasting around FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa
Schedules for additional productions will be defined separately.
Scope Elements
The media project is based on television. In order to keep it simple, cross-media or multimedia activities are not integrated in that Memorandum. However, radio broadcasters or other media are welcome and their role will be defined on a pragmatic basis (letter of understanding or others, including all project partners). On that basis, radio programmes, a specific website or printed matters may be developed.
Outputs
Each partner is free to define the output (broadcasting) following the specific conditions.
Each partner is obliged to inform the other partners in advance about its airtime schedule for “shorts” or other programmes connected to the Bridging The Worlds.
Business Model/Funding Model
The funding model is based on the principle that each partner’s participation in the project is part of its regular activities and therefore, each partner is covering its own costs. Each partner will get added value by cooperation with other partners, i.e.: Production for exchange with other TV partners; cooperation with sport partners for an attractive content of high value (values in education etc.); generating visibility for all partners involved etc.
Overhead costs are covered by a “start up” fee of € 1000 (one thousand Euros) of each partner or € 500 for a partner from a developing country.
Industrialized country participants are free to cover the costs of poor country participants (sponsorship).
Further overhead costs (coordination; traveling; supervision; evaluation) are covered by the institutions involved. Additionally, the Project Management will apply at sport and media for development related organizations for covering those costs.
In case such resources are not available, the management will address the project partners in due time.
Budget
Each partner is free to declare its project budget.
The Project Management will establish an approximate budget for coordination and supervision and other general costs in cooperation with the management partners.
Sponsoring and Product Placement
There’s no sponsoring or product placement permitted inside the shorts-shorts, except the necessary equipment (dresses, boots etc.) for the specific activities connected to the project (sport and media). An exclusive list for those products and their donors shall be established.
Sponsoring outside the content of the shorts-shorts is permitted following the laws and regulations of each broadcasters territory.
Project Management:
General Coordination
• cc: communication & cooperation, Switzerland (Robert Ruoff – Project Coordinator)
Media Coordination
• KRO national broadcasting, Netherlands (Jan-Willem Bult – Supervising Producer)
Sport Coordination
• SCORT – go for it: for peace. for aid. for development, Principality of Liechtenstein, with local partners
Evaluation Coordination (Scientific Project Evaluation)
• IDIEM – Instituto di Investigación en Media, Buenos Aires, Argentina (Tatiana Merlo Flores)
Left to right: Jan-Willem Bult (KRO), Robert Ruoff (CC) and Marc Buchwalder (SCORT) brought three streetkids from Argentina to the Alexandra tournament to mix with the Alexandra and Sandton kids, march 25 2007.
After the Alexandra pilot in march 2007, local coaches and international partners (from Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Serbia, Netherlands) played a friendly soccer match.
BRIDGING THE WORLDS
www.youtube.com/bridgingtheworlds
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