WDR

World Development & Relief is the Methodist Church in Ireland’s international development team, working alongside locally led partners to tackle global poverty. Its approach is built around people rather than projects, recognising that communities understand their own contexts, challenges and solutions better than anyone arriving from outside. WDR supports that local knowledge with long-term partnership, helping create greater access to clean water, food security, education and opportunity.

The challenge was never simply to document the work. Each trip meant entering cultures, languages, relationships and ways of communicating that were not our own. We needed to understand the context, earn trust and tell stories accurately rather than arriving as outsiders and immediately placing cameras in people’s faces. The work had to show both need and impact without reducing anyone to their circumstances, finding the human connection that allowed people to represent themselves with dignity.

In South Africa, we worked across several communities and strands of work: literacy and numeracy for marginalised children, women’s economic empowerment and preschool education, and land sovereignty through food production. We built each story through lived moments rather than formal explanation, filming learning, cultivation, enterprise and community life as they happened. Together, the films show different forms of change connected by local knowledge, collective action and people creating opportunity on their own terms.