(María Eugenia Gómez). Roberto Alcazar, founder and creative director of EO Integration in New York, an agency focused on social content, gave PRODU some background about the documentary Yasuni, to premiere next March 9 at the Miami International Film Festival 2013.
As to what developing this social project has meant for the agency, Alcazar said, “It is mainly a confirmation that social content sparks responses among consumers and gets them to take action when the message is relevant to their interests and the times they are living in.”
The project was made possible by the direct support of the United Nations’ Yasuni ITT (the Ishpingo-Tiputini-Tambococha oil field) Initiative, administered by the Ecuadorian presidency. “The documentary seeks to raise awareness about the need to protect the rainforests, Earth’s principal lung, and the indigenous communities that still live in them. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which includes provisions for an international reforestation fund, the Yasuni Initiative seeks to create a prevention fund to protect irreplaceable lands like this (Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park),” he said.
A scant four months after the project to preserve Yasuni National Park was created, social networks involved in the project have grown monthly at a pace comparable to some of the leading social movements in the world, such as OneSocialWeb and Red Social N-1.
“Currently the websites in English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic have more than 150,000 followers. But perhaps the greatest achievement of the campaign has been to win direct donations to the United Nations fund, something that never happened before,” Alcazar said.
