Videographing Kitty Van Der Heidjen’s visit to Siem Reap for UNICEF

It was a pleasure to be contacted by UNICEF to make a video of Kitty Van Der Heidjen’s visit to Siem Reap. UNICEF’s communications department are always easy to work with. They have a clear vision of what they want to achieve. They provided me with a solid brief that we went over during pre-production so everyone was clear on what the outputs would be.

 Kitty Van Der Heidjen is the Deputy Executive Director of Partnerships for UNICEF. She visited a school in Siem Reap to see how UNICEF has been supporting the life skill development for young people.

 In the morning we visited a school and the students made presentations about their campaigns to raise awareness about the environment and climate change.

 Kitty was impressed by what she saw. ‘I have been completely amazed by what I saw. In front of me on the podium, I had 12-year-olds, mostly girls, by the way, who were talking about climate change,’ she said.

‘They were talking about what they saw in their community. They were talking about what they saw in their community in terms of how that is impacting their lives. and the need to collect waste and the need to recycle waste,’ she added.

 Kitty was also impressed by the tree planting campaign run by the students, ‘They were talking about planting trees and making sure that the trees were well-maintained, so that we could actually do something about climate change.’

 In the afternoon we visited the communities to see the positive changes the young people’s projects had created.

 ‘A big part of what they are doing is not just talking about this in their classroom, but really talking to their parents, talking to other classmates, talking to their communities and making change happen,’ said Kitty.

 It was a challenging shoot as Siem Reap was suffering from a heatwave and a severe drought that was taking away vital income from the communities surrounding the school.

 ‘The village pond, where they would take tourists to go on a boat ride is gone,’ said Kitty.

While the situation is dire, it was great to see youth-led initiatives making such a positive impact in their communities. Hopefully UNICEF can expand their work in this area both in Cambodia and globally and Kitty can mobilise more youth to join the Green Rising movement.

You can see more examples of my work with UNICEF here and here.