MTV to air Angelina Jolie Africa diary

By M&C News Aug 15, 2005, 22:37 GMT

MTV has announced that The Diary of Angelina Jolie & Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa will premiere on September 14 at 7 p.m.

The 30-minute special episode of the long-running DIARY series follows Angelina Jolie and UN advisor/economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs as they travel to Sauri, a remote group of villages in Western Kenya, where Sachs' UN Millennium Project team is working to end the poverty, hunger and disease afflicting the area. With cameras in tow, Jolie and Sachs experience first-hand the effects of the devastation unique to Africa -- and provide hope as they highlight hopeful progress in this Millennium village.

The story of Sauri will be told through Jolie and Dr. Sachs' personal lens on the poverty crisis, as viewers follow them encountering members of the community (mothers, children, teachers, health workers, and village elders) who have been severely affected by lack of clean water, depleted soil, malnutrition, and poor health care. In addition, we'll see the practical approaches currently underway in the villages to address these challenges and the progress that has already been made. The village shows that with the right approach and enough funding, extreme poverty can indeed be ended in just a few years.

The September premiere of the special will coincide with the opening of the U.N. Special Summit on the Millennium Development Goals, which in 2000 were adopted by nearly 200 world leaders to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by 2015.

"We are at a unique threshold in human history, where the crisis we face in Africa is matched only by our degree of hope that we can and will be a force for positive change," said Angelina Jolie.

 "I'm certain the stories in this special will inspire viewers the same way these experiences have inspired me, and I'm hopeful that increased awareness of the issues in Africa will bring about a new wave of progress and activism among young people everywhere."

Since August 2001, Jolie has visited UNHCR refugee operations throughout the world in an effort to bring attention to the cause.

"For the first time in history, we have the technology and know-how to actually end extreme poverty, and Sauri is a perfect illustration of exactly how the fight can be won," added Jeffrey Sachs, Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Director of the UN Millennium Project and Director of Columbia University's Earth Institute.

"By working with MTV and Angelina Jolie on this documentary, we are eager to show young people that they have an extraordinary power to make a difference in this crisis -- by engaging in very simple, yet very powerful, acts that could change the lives of their counterparts across the globe."

Some of those measures, which are highlighted in the special, include: bed nets to keep away mosquitoes and thereby malaria; fertilizer to grow enough crops to ensure that the villagers do not go hungry; school lunches so every child is assured at least one nutritious meal a day, anti-retrovirals for every person living with AIDS, etc.

Finally, through think MTV's relationship with Cable in the Classroom, Diary will air commercial-free on MTV's designated CIC weekly timeslot and an associated lesson plan developed by Millennium Promise will be offered for free download for use by tens of thousands of teachers, K-12 educators, and librarians in 80,000 schools in the United States, and will be promoted through CIC's monthly magazine -- ACCESS LEARNING -- which reaches approximately 300,000 readers.