Immediate Media Release
The Light Millennium Television (LMTV) - http://www.lightmillennium.org/lmtv/all.html
Email: LMTV@lightmillennium.org - Tel: 718-441- 3816
Effective date: July 20, 2015 - Updated on August 10, 2015
2015 Alliance for Community Media National Hometown Award Receipent:
Bircan Ünver, “First Place" in the Educational Activities Category
Media Release by QPTV:
2015 Alliance for Community Media National Hometown Award Winning Program
[LMTV, July 20, 2015, New York] The Light Millennium Television proudly announce the following: “PIONEER OF THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS: ATATÜRK High-Level Inaugural Session” (MDGs & ATATÜRK) program that produced, directed and edited by Bircan Ünver. The crew members of the program are: Rene Valdivia (Camera, Technical Director), Richard Graziano (2nd Camera), Jim Oderwald (quotation narrated) and Cora Fernandez (still photography) won the “First Place” under Independent Producers and Educational Activities at the National Alliance of Community Media Award (ACM) - 2015 Hometown Video Festival. The award ceremony will take place in Pasadena, California on August 13, 2015.
The winning program produced based on the Interactive Session and Concluding Remarks of the Pioneer of the Millennium Development Goals: Ataturk - two-day conference as a mini-series (6/6). The initial two-day conference directed by the producer, and co-chaired with Prof. Edward Foster at College of Arts and Letters at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey on April 19-20, 2015. In particular, the winning episode of 6/6 was produced in 2014 and shown several times both at QPTV.Org and MNN.Org channels in New York.
The 2000 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has aimed to elevate living conditions for all people both on the local and international levels to be attained by 2015. Yet, this overall noble goal has not reached the local communities, therefore the producer considers that there is a disconnect in between the local communities and the United Nations (UN). This program's purpose is to present the Global Partnerships for Development and Peace perspectives (goal #8), which is the least successfully achieved goals of the MDGs. Therefore the program consists of four UN Ambassadors and a renowned former NY Times International Correspondent and author along with discussants of the interactive session as follow (according to the April 19, 2013 credentials and it was presented as in the conference's Program): (Hon.) Dr. Stephen Kinzer (Keynote), Author of “Crescent & Star: Turkey Between in Two Worlds”, and Professor of International Relations at Boston University; H.E. Mr. Halit Çevik, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Turkey to the UN; H.E. Mr. Akan Rakhmetullin, Deputy Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan to the UN; H.E. Mr. Pajo Avirovikj, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Macedonia to the UN; H.E. Mr. Carlos E. Garcia Gonzales, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of El Salvador to the UN; Chair of the Inaugural Session: Susan Bilello, Senior Communications and Liaison Officer for UNESCO at the UN; Closing Remarks by: Bircan Ünver, Co-Chair, Founder-President of The Light Millennium and [Head] NGO Representative at the Department of Public Information of the United Nations. And, interactive Session participants in the winning program are: Prof. Surrendra Kauchik, Associate Prof. Gul Celkan and Ms. Mara Hana, Civil Society Representative.
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The issues covered in this program are basic human development related issues from an international perspective. In addition,
it delivers a historic, inspirational and visionary message from the UN Ambassadorial level as well as interactive session brings in academic and civil society perspectives into the discussion.
Set Photographer:
Cora Fernandez
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The winning program is available via the following link:
http://www.lightmillennium.org/lmtv/mdg-ataturk-interactive-concluding-remarks-part6.mp4.
Bircan Ünver is an independent producer, director and editor at Queens Public Television (QPTV) since 1992, and is the founder and president of The Light Millennium – Public Benefit Multi-Media and Culture organization (LM, volunteer base, based in Queens, NY, officially formed in 2001). She is also [head] NGO representative at the United Nations Department of Public Information of the LM since 2005. With this capacity, she has had opportunities to attend the annual UN General Assembly gatherings and various major international conferences and MDGs Reports both from the UN and from country-based conferences and reports. She is a native Turk and appreciates more the founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who abolished religious based government and replaced it with a secular democratic Republic of Turkey in 1923. In particular, during the Ataturk Era and the first 15 years of Turkey, indeed, Turkey had illustrated a Golden Age in terms of human centered national development, universal education, gender equality and women's right to vote and be elected as leaders. The conference and the program clearly illustrate this early example on the country base that truly could be a model to the rest of the Muslim world and the developing countries. The conference and the program already have contributed to the academic world and produced 20 papers as well as created an ongoing interest in the “MDGs & ATATÜRK – High Level Inaugural Session” programs on the Internet. With that said, producing the program has been successfully achieved its goal.
ALLIANCE FOR COMMUNITY MEDIA 2015 NATIONAL HOMETOWN MEDIA AWARDS' Announcement follows:
"We are proud to announce our 2015 Hometown Media Award winners! The Hometown Media Awards recognize the best community media programming of 2014, and include student, independent producer and access center professional categories.
Our judges scored over 1,000 entries that were submitted from around the country.
View a full list of winners here!
All winners will be honored at the 2015 Hometown Media Awards Celebration on August 13th in Pasadena. This celebration is being held in conjunction with the 2015 ACM Annual Conference."
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AN ENCOURAGEMENT TOWARDS SIMILAR PROGRAMS… As it is indicated at the beginning of the first paragraph, the United Nations Eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targeted to be attained by the end of this year/2015 in 2000. Although there are some achievements and progress on certain goals, still the member states of the United Nations in both developed and developing countries couldn’t achieved the very basic fundamental human rights both on the country and the global level. At the same time, the 193 members states of the United Nations and General Assembly have fully focused on the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs with 17 goals) to be attained by 2030 as a global agenda and action plan for human development towards to establishing a social protection floor for the entire human race along with ensuring environment sustainability towards world peace. On this ground, although the conference was organized in April 2013, and the winner television program was produced and shown on QPTV and MNN channels in September and October 2014; a combination of this, will provide to the producer to promote extensively both the awarded program and concept as well as at the last stage and months of the Millennium Development Goals in particular during its transition period from the MDGs to the SDGs.
AN EXCELLENT TIMING! In a decade or more of rapidly elevated “Radicalization of Turkey and Middle East”, and despite the UN’s first 15 years Eight Goals through the MDGs which anonymously approved by the members states of the UN to be achieved by the end of the 2015, unfortunately, “freedom of expression”, “access to information”, “universal education for girls”, “empowerment of women” and “gender equality”, in some of the Middle Eastern and Islamic countries went drastically backwards, which have been sacrificed under the name of “freedom of religion” versus “freedom of expression”. Specifically, in Turkey, which was the very first and only leading secular country in the Middle East and Islamic world for freedom and democratic rights, secular life-style, gender equality and women rights and more which by now terribly pushed backwards during the last 13 years through removing “separation of powers” and escalating fundamentalist religious power to the government with an ultimate goal reversing of Turkey’s secular system to an Islamic state as of similar to Iran!
With that note, the Producer thanks to the panel of the video festival that via the Hometown Video Festival Award, which will allow and empower the producer to bring this concept to the surface again and attention of the local communities including, Educational institutions, member states of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations as well as through web and social media to a much wider international community. The Producer also thanks to QPTV for the initial encouragement to apply it as well as the afterwards support based on the ACM’s provided information to QPTV.
All in all, this award has inspired and encouraged more of the producer in terms of undertaken new conferences towards being a bridge in both between the United Nations and educational institutions as well as with local communities via local public access channels such as Queens Public Television, whereas the producer has been producing and contributing television programs since 1992.
Six parts of the mini-series of the Pioneer of the Millennium Development Goals: ATATÜRK Inaugural Session’s videos (MDGs & ATATÜRK) along with Final Report and presented papers of the initial conference are available in the following lınk: http://www.lightmillennium.org/ataturk/2013/conference.html
PREVIOUS AWARDS AND RECOGNITION: Bircan received several other awards and recognition from various ‘Video Festival’s locally, regionally and nation-wide in the U.S. over the years, in particular, in the “arts category” which goes back to 1997 and onward. “Doğu’nun İzleri: Erol Akyavaş” (‘The Mark of the East’ produced, 1997, in Turkish), was the finalist at the 1997 Hometown Video Festival, which followed by two awards for the “Wall of the World: Burhan Dogancay” (video), received “First Place” in Arts Category (media release) at the North-East Video Festival (1998) and the 1998 Hometown Jurors’ Choice Awards in the same year.
QPTV Winter Mixer 2013 and Award Ceremony video is available through Vimeo:
For more information: http://www.qptv.org/content/qptv-winter-mixer-2013
Further, she received two “First Place” awards for her “Matisse and Picasso” program based on the MoMA exhibit along with “Crescent & Star - Presented by Stephen Kinzer” in "Ethnic" Category at CAPA Video Festival (NY) in 2004.
In later years, Bircan also received “Accolade: “Award of Merit” for her “Francis Bacon: Humans are violent…”program, which was produced based on the Metropolitan Museum Arts’ exhibit in 2010.
In 2013, “2015 and Beyond in Arts and Science” (produced, 2011) and “The Next Ten Years: On the Fourth UN the Least Developed Countries Conference – Featuring with H.E. Ertuğrul Apakan (produced, 2011) received two of QPTV’s Community Merit Awards along with a third award, ‘trophy”, which she received for her over 20 years program/content contribution to QPTV during the QPTV Winter Mixer 2013.
1998 - “Walls of the World”, North East Video Festival, “First Place” in “Arts” Category is mentioned in NY Daily News in the following link: http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/boroughs/nabes-breaking-ground-faa-article-1.814245
All in all, the producer is very excited to receive the recent “First Place” award under the “Educational Activities”, specifically, for her very enthusiastic concept and produced and presented a mini LMTV series based on the Inaugural Session of the “Pioneer of the Millennium Development Goals: ATATÜRK” Conference.
Video of the winning program will be available through Alliance for Community Media North East Region (ACM-NE) website after July 31, 2015: http://acm-ne.org/
Media Release by Queens Public Television on QPTV's website:
2015 Alliance for Community Media National Hometown Award Winning Program
The Light Millennium TV - MDGs & ATATÜRK - High Level Inaugural Session (pdf)
Alliance of Community Media (ACM) - 2015 Hometown Media Awards
More on LMTV’s diverse programs
The Light Millennium TV, is under the umbrella of The Light Millennium Organizaion,
NGO Associated with the United Nations Department of Public Information since 2005...
For more information: The Light Millennium Television - http://www.lightmillennium.org/lmtv/all.html
Email: LMTV@lightmillennium.org
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