Writer: Hannah Bickel, Paul Schilling and Okihiro Yamada
We are three students from NIST International School and for our Work Experience week at the GIZ were given the incredible opportunity to investigate, plan and produce a short documentary on the benefits of sustainable rice in Thailand. After the initial phase of planning and scripting the video, we spend some time traveling to the Angthong province in central Thailand to interview rice farmers on their perspective working in the industry. We also received expertise insight from members of the Thai Rice department and SRP (Sustainable Rice Platform) Secretariat to further develop our video.
Producing our own educational video to raise awareness on sustainability in the agricultural industry for the general public was a very interesting and rewarding process. We learned to communicate with people who did not speak the same language as us and use their expertise to clarify the content we created. Our end product, a short documentary, features the knowledge we gained out of the experience to be of use to consumers of rice. It was a truly unforgettable experience which has given us valuable insight into what working in the field of international development is like and has definitely sparked our interest in the field of sustainability.