The Indian Shooting Poverty outreach team began its work in the first week of April. The team includes Tanya Notley and Maya Ganesh from Tactical Tech, Anirban Dutta from Metamorphosis Films and researcher and activist Dharmesh Shah.

The start of the Indian outreach activities took place amid the Indian Government’s announcement of its biggest counter insurgency operation in the jungles of Central India, the Operation Green Hunt, which began between July-December 2009. This made the announcement of the Shooting Poverty competition both more important and more sensitive as well especially given the sensitivities over Green Hunt.

Statistics on the issue of arms trade highlighted on the Shooting Poverty website show that India is second only to China when it comes to illegal arms trade. Shooting Poverty promises to highlight issues related to arms trade in India by allowing the voices of young Indians to tell stories of how people are being affected.

The most obvious people for us to reach out to as potential participants in the competition, were film and media schools across the country. We phoned, wrote emails and sent posters to more than 50 schools, though the school holiday break made this a little more than challenging! Five film schools in Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata have already hosted Shooting Poverty information sessions, which were led by Anirban Dutta.

Many students from the Loyola College and the Prasad Academy for Media and Communication expressed they were keen to participate. The Sri Lankan students were also passionate to document the impact of armed conflict in their island nation which has recently emerged from a civil war. Students from north India studying at the Prasad Academy spoke about the importance of documenting the arms conflict among ethnic and cultural groups in Uttar Pradesh, while also sharing their safety concerns.

The second task for the outreach team was to gather contacts for civil society groups across India who could help spread the word and who might have different stories to tell about the impacts of arms trade. More than 100 groups were contacted in the first week of the outreach. Shooting Poverty has now been presented at the Maps for Change workshop at Bangalore attended by activists and researchers from various backgrounds across India. At another event in the R.D National College, Mumbai information about Shooting Poverty was distributed after the screening of 10 Tactics film and a talk by Dina Mehta on Twitter activism

On the online outreach front some good old Facebooking, Orkuting and Tweeting was deployed. A Shooting Poverty Facebook page was the priority followed by long hours of searching to locate rights-based groups and communities. Listserves and email databases from various sources were also contacted in addition to social networking groups.

Their have been some roadblocks to get word out given it is summer holidays and there are many sensitivities over the escalating arms conflict in central India. But beyond this, the overwhelming response has been that the competition is an absolutely innovative concept with a lot of appeal for those passionate about wanting to make social documentaries that can help create positive social change.