A Conversation with Evan Papp of Power Africa

Do you want to learn how to travel internationally with video gear and develop a multimedia strategy from beginning to end?

Bryce Spivey, Chair of the Video Production Pros Community of Practice, talks with Evan Papp, Deputy Director of Communications for Power Africa from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), about a video and story he produced while traveling internationally in Africa.

We will discuss everything from concept to completion, including marketing, collaboration, overcoming challenges, lessons learned, and more.

What you will learn

• Capturing stories on sensitive topics around human tragedy and hope
• Working in challenging environments with limited infrastructure
• Working through limited resources
• Emphasizing distribution, distribution, distribution
• Tips and tricks of moving a story through a bureaucracy

About the project

Côte d’Ivoire’s October 2015 presidential election was the first since the disastrous 2010 election, which left 3,000 dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Evan travelled with a photographer to Côte d’Ivoire to meet with Ako Essan Emile, who was the managing director of Radio Arc-en-ciel based in a volatile Abidjan neighborhood greatly affected by the 2010 violence. In the lead up to the 2015 presidential elections, Radio Arc-en-ciel received a USAID grant to promote peaceful messages. This is Ako’s story.

This multimedia story was part of USAID’s story hub built in 2013. At the time of shooting, Evan was in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance.

• Website Evan designed: https://stories.usaid.gov/akos-radio/
• Video Evan produced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvo7WVKvPGU

About the presenters

Evan Matthew Papp supports the strategic communications, press outreach, digital engagement and public affairs of Power Africa, a U.S. Government-led initiative to double access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative consists of more than 150 public and private sector partners, which have collectively committed more than $54 billion towards achieving Power Africa’s goals of 30,000 megawatts and 60 million new connections. It is among the world’s largest public-private partnerships in development history.

Evan works on strategic storytelling that resonates with public audiences and policymakers in Washington. Video is his favorite storytelling medium and he is competent in photography, mapping, social media, website design and writing.

Before joining USAID, he spent five years with the Peace Corps working in Zambia, Jamaica and Washington, D.C. He has also started up a few businesses on the side including a farm to table event space in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia and is in the process of launching an artist space called Empathy Media Lab.

Evan learned filmmaking outside of work through night classes, seminars and certificate programs that include DCTV community access training, MediaStorm, and Good Fight Media.

Bryce Spivey is a 4-time Emmy award-winning filmmaker who has directed, produced, filmed, and/or edited over 100 documentary and commercial style videos for clients such as Hilton Worldwide, Lockheed Martin, Levick, and Johns Hopkins University. He has received 11 nominations for Emmy Awards, and has won 2 AVA Digital Awards, 3 Communicator Awards, and 19 Telly Awards—among others.

Over the past two years, Bryce has served as the multimedia lead for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which recruited him to establish and grow the agency’s entire multimedia program, including photography and video production. During this short time, Bryce and his team received recognition and praise from top government professionals for their creative and innovative approach to convey complex financial concepts in a simple and engaging way through video. In addition to his work at the CFPB, Bryce mentors students and guest lectures about storytelling for the M.S.Ed. in Education Entrepreneurship capstone course at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bryce graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with his bachelor of science in Public Relations and currently lives in Washington, D.C.

The Video Production Pros Community of Practice is a group of of storytellers, artists, creatives, directors, DPs, producers, editors and more working for various federal agencies. They share leading trends, best practices, latest projects, feedback, techniques, and strategies that help their respective agencies connect with people through the power of video. Learn more about joining.