Ancient bazaar of Aleppo, Syria. [Image: Creative Commons.]

Our Vision

Over fifteen years 2009-2024, we at Humanitarian Bazaar built a reputation around the emergency response, war journalism, and peacebuilding arts world for being not only innovative, but also unusual. Our original concept was to recreate that mystical concept of an ancient market like we found in Mogadishu, Kabul, Peshawar, or Aleppo, where one could find stories, guides, and a team before departing to the war front or search and rescue mission in a tough place. While we made headlines, reached millions, and carved our place in history, we never intended to be a traditional business or nonprofit institution. Instead, we created Humanitarian Bazaar more like a seasonal film production company and arts community taking on the world’s toughest crises.

PRODUCING CREATIVE HUMANITARIAN MEDIA

“Last month saw the staging of the Mogadishu Music Festival in the war-torn capital city of Somalia. Despite…fear of reprisals from extremists, over 2,000 people attended the six concerts. Lead producer [and Humanitarian Bazaar founder] Daniel J. Gerstle explains that the festival was launched “not for music’s sake, but because we firmly believe Somalia’s war cannot be brought to an end purely through military and humanitarian means. Cultural forces must also play a role in persuading the country’s lost and troubled youth not to join extremists, not to destroy, not to kill…” — Rolling Stone (Middle East)

HB founder Daniel J. Gerstle has served as an emergency coordinator, running large humanitarian aid portfolios for major aid agencies, as well as writing for Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and others. But with HB, he and the founding advisors wanted to do something different. While Daniel funded the online magazine and core costs personally and sometimes through loans with old friends, he often develops projects with local allies in tough situations. Once a new project has been developed, Daniel brings together HB’s Advisory group with the local allies to find a funding partner. When that partner is secured, then HB will (a) hire a local team to run the project on the ground, (b) introduce the partner and local allies to another organization who can do the work, (c) recommend either an HB team member or ally as a consultant, or (d) provide pro bono volunteer assistance if there is a community in dire need of humanitarian media or consulting support. Below we include a snapshot of our mission, objectives, and impact.

Mission.

HB produces creative projects focused on how civilians survive war and disaster. More specifically, that means finding out from local civil society which innovative stories, campaigns, or proposals could help more civilians survive, escape threats, or reduce suffering. Then we aim to support those local peacebuilders, humanitarians, or artists, or helping to tell their story, or recommending them to other partners who could do well for the public good.

Rationale & Target Community.

HB develops projects first from the ground-upward, when local civil society calls for support for something meaningful or has an important story about how people endure violence and hardship. We may build from the top down, such as when the United Nations, leading aid agencies, and rights advocacy groups point out gaps or new directions based on their vast experience and analysis. Our growing community of participants, viewers, and followers in Somalia, Kenya, Afghanistan, Bosnia and diaspora communities still outpaces our general global following. Westerners would see this as a challenge to sell influence, visibility, or advertising to wealthier economies. But we have always seen this as an advantage that communities facing tough crises and recovery look toward us. Given that, our primary audience for humanitarian media, innovation, and stories has always been the local communities where we have a home including East Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southwest Asia. We are also excited to bring our vision to the rest of the world, as long as it doesn’t compromise our relationship with recovering communities.

Objective #1  |  Produce Media Documenting Solutions to Complex Emergencies.

HB Media aims to increase the international community’s awareness and understanding of how local survivors of war and disaster create nonviolent means to build peace, reduce conflict, and reduce suffering, and how outsiders can better support them. In the coming months, HB will premiere Somali Sunrise (formerly known as Live from Mogadishu), its long awaited feature documentary film about Somali hip hop’s journey to end a war, as well as How We Survive, the complex multimedia documentary about civilians who innovated nonviolent techniques to help people survive war and mass violence. In the past, our completed films included Filming Violence (Oxfam), Vanishing Lands (Adeso Africa), and Mogadishu Music (UNDP).

Objective #2  |  Conduct Research & Produce Media Tools to Improve Nonviolent Civilian Protection in Mass Violence.

HB’s War Survivors Advisory aims to increase access for low-income civilians in war zones to awareness, education, and instructional manuals, tools, and other support for improving nonviolent self-protection for people trapped in the crossfire of mass violence. Over 2013-2016, HB’s founder decided to fund this very sensitive long-term research project in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Ukraine largely personally to preserve independence, safety, and a patient timeline. However, over 2017-2018, HB ran two small crowd funding campaigns, and will likely do so to help Afghan team members and complete the first edition of the manual in 2021.

Objective #3  |  Support Peace and Rights Advocates, Musicians, and Artists.

HB’s Frontline Music project aims to promote and support musicians and artists who wielded their creative work to promote peace, mitigate conflict, or press for freedom of expression at great risk during war and extremism. That means we work with peace advocates, musicians, and artists to campaign to end violence in their communities; and then if they are threatened, we help with safety and migration advice and sometimes refugee casework. Beyond the Somali Sunrise Tour ft. Waayaha Cusub, K’naan, & Alsarah; Mogadishu Music Festival ft. Waayaha Cusub & Afro Simba; and Sound Central Festival produced by Combat Comms ft. Kabul Dreams, District Unknown, & White Page; HB also helped to promote and collaborate with global artists including Desiigner (via Waayaha Cusub & Spotify), The Dresden Dolls (via Brian Viglione), Ariana Delawari, Aar Maanta, Yula Be’eri, and many others.

Objective #4  |  Provide Services & Training.

HB has already provided workshops on producing humanitarian media and/or improving emergency response in Germany (AKNZ Ahrweiler, Factory Berlin), United States (Columbia University in New York), United Kingdom (University of Oxford, SOAS, The Mosaic Room), Netherlands (Education Villa), Austria (Vienna M60), Bosnia (Cafe Bolero, Sarajevo National Library), Afghanistan (Bard College event), and more.

Objective #5  |  Publish Online Magazine.

HB Magazine (our first project, originally known as HELO, the slang term for helicopters) created our community over 2009-2014, including a wide variety of crisis journalism, literary stories, video documentary, photo essays, music, recipes, humor, and art. In 2021, HB plans to relaunch the magazine as a combination of rebuilding our global community, producing meaningful stories, sharing the findings of our humanitarian research, and promote our films and artwork.

HOW WE SHAPE A PROJECT FOR IMPACT

Our largest program, the Somali Sunrise Concert Tour for Peace and its feature documentary film and media campaign, originated when Somali hip hop group Waayaha Cusub invited HB to document their peacebuilding tour which would bring live music back to Somalia as a means of persuading youth to help end the war.

When WC learned of our work helping on the Sound Central Festival in Afghanistan, they asked if HB would also like to be the co-producer of their tour, campaign, and festivals. HB considered how WC had already produced numerous albums, video, and millions of video views; how their campaigns highlighted a huge opportunity for mitigating conflict as evidenced by the public debates they generated, and then agreed to work with them.

Together this ten-year collaboration of projects brought in direct partnerships (UNDP, US Embassy in Kenya, Bill Brookman Foundation, Radio Daljir, and smaller support from Fairplanet, Freemuse, Cultures of Resistance, and others), in-kind partnerships (Government of Somalia primarily) and volunteer support (HB’s many advisors and helpers), and  self-funding through the founder and long-term personal loans when things went over budget, as investment in the final film. Numbers will be clarified in our coming audit and financial report, so these are approximations.

With those resources, HB paid day rate to about 30 team members, producing a tour of 24 concert events (which included the historic Mogadishu Music Festival, the Sister Somalia show, the Serendi Rap Against Violence concert with detained former fighters, the Journey of Peace Dadaab, Eastleigh Peace Festival, K’naan in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC), 12 campaign videos, and reached about 5,000 live event participants, estimated 40,000 satellite and tv views, and 1,800,000 youtube views. As for impact, our film and coming legacy report includes interviews with youth who took part, about how their views were changed more toward peace and toward reducing clan and religious division.

We will extend this section with updated business plan detail soon!

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