Russia's first public service announcements on integration: a great success

Perspektiva is a Russian Disability NGO that has been changing attitudes toward people with disabilities in Russia since 1997. They are focusing their efforts on improving access to education and employment for young people with disabilities with funding from USAID and the Ford Foundation. Perspektiva holds a Disability Film Festival every two years and the next festival will be held in Moscow, November 11-14, 2004. Films concerning disabilities of all kinds are being accepted through the end of April.

Public service announcements - a new concept in Russia
Inspired by the 2002 film festival, and with funds from the US State Department and the British Human Rights Fund, Perspektiva developed its first animated public service announcements. The goal of the PSAs was to raise public awareness about the need to integrate children with disabilities into mainstream schools. The PSAs were aired free of charge on 4 national TV stations in the course of 2 months and were shown on electronic tableaus in Moscow, and are still being aired on regional TV stations. Most importantly, feedback on the PSAs from different people in the community has been very positive.

PSAs are still a very new concept in Russia. The first Russian-made PSAs, shown approximately 5 years ago aimed to scare the viewer into using or doing something e.g. using condoms, or rejecting some action, e.g. taking drugs. Since then, more sophisticated PSAs have appeared with more subtle messages, however, disability PSAs are still very rare. Perspektiva first attempted to air PSAs on a disability topic on national TV in 1998-99, but these efforts were met by resistance, and none of the PSAs were shown. Now, 5 years later, Perspektiva succeeded in airing its new PSAs on 4 national TV stations free of charge.

Producing the PSAs
After hours of debate, Perspektiva staff settled on animated films. Perspektiva wanted films that would interest both young and old. We wanted to be certain that the message would not frighten or turn away viewers, but would catch their attention and make them think about an issue new to them. Finally, we wanted viewers to remember and recognize our characters in the future and to associate them with Access to Education for disabled kids. We wanted to create recognizable characters that we could use in future films, posters, etc in our campaign to promote equal access to education.

Yet another challenge was to produce a film that would convey our message - kids with disabilities must be included into mainstream schools -- in 15 seconds, and would portray kids with different disabilities. After all, we had learned that the shorter the PSA, the more likely TV stations would agree to air it free of charge.

We identified an animator -- Elizabeth Skvortsov, who had recently graduated from film school. She had already participated in 2 international festivals and received an award for the best student film, but she had never created something on the topic of disability. It took many meetings, at least 50 sketches and hours of dialogue for us to finally agree on 3 PSAs that conveyed our message and fit all of our criteria.

With the help of a film producer Andrei Stankevich, who collaborated previously with Perspektiva on a film about access issues, the PSAs were finally completed with music and titles. Our next task was to air them. We sent letters to 5 TV stations and, after viewing the PSAs, all but one agreed to air them free of charge. The first to agree and begin showing them was the Russian edition of MTV (MusicTeleVision). They aired the PSAs at all hours of the day and night in the course of 2 months, and after the 2 month period, sent us a letter stating the market value of the airtime was $100,000. Because of this generous contribution, teenagers all over Russia had the chance to see our PSAs. Another station -- NTV is one of the two most popular National TV stations. NTV has a reputation of airing only the most professionally produced TV programs and are also very selective about the PSAs they show. They, too, aired our films during a 2-3 month period and people from the West of Russia to the Far East saw our PSAs.

Feedback was very positive and what was even more exciting is that people actually remembered scenes and characters from the PSAs. Creating and airing these animated PSAs was a very positive experience for all of us at Perspektiva and, now, with even more confidence were are able to develop and air new ones.

Click on the images to play the movies (or right-click and select "save" to download). You will need QuickTime Player to watch the movies.

 
 


Descriptions of PSAs
Top: A few school children and friends are at a crosswalk and they are waiting for the light to turn red so that they can cross the street. Eventually the light turns red and they proceed to cross. Then they notice that their blind friend is still standing at the crosswalk. A bird that is sitting on top of the light has failed to crow and give the signal to cross because it has fallen asleep. Noticing the sleeping bird, the other children return back to the other side of the street, climb on top of one another and wake up the bird. The bird wakes up and finally crows, giving the signal to cross. The blind boy now walks to the other side of the street, followed by the other children. The caption reads, "Let's make going to school accessible to disabled children."

Middle: A few children are playing a game of catch with a beach ball on a school playground. A boy sitting in a wheelchair stares down at them from the balcony of his apartment. He has a sad look on his face because he wants to play too but cannot get down to the playground. Then a dog sitting in an air balloon sees the boy and picks him up from the balcony. In the air balloon the dog takes him down to the boys that are playing on the grass. The boy joins them in their game of catch and they all have fun playing together! The caption reads, "Let's make schools accessible to disabled children."

Bottom: A few children are sitting down in class. Suddenly somebody says something and they all jump out of their seats and start cheering. A deaf boy watches them all cheer but feels sad because he does not understand why they are cheering and jumping up and down. Then the other children decide to hold up a sign that reads "Vacation" so that the deaf boy will know why everyone else is so happy. Once he reads the sign, he starts cheering too! The caption reads, "Let's make education accessible."

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