Overview

The Third Eye Project is a collaborative endeavour between the Asian Center for Entertainment Education, India, and Hollywood, Health and Society (HH&S) at the Norman Lear Center, University of Southern California.

It is one of the three Global Centres, the others being in Nigeria and Mexico, which is funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, primarily to harness the power of media and entertainment and to spread awareness and information about key health, sustainable development and climate change issues.

The Third Eye connects creative communities (producers, writers, authors, directors and journalists) to experts across various fields (doctors, lawyers, public health specialists, environmentalists, etc.) and is the bridge between creative communities and the priorities of our times.

Core Beliefs of the Organization

The belief that drives the program is that the audiences who consume entertainment are the same as the populations which tireless frontline workers address; and that popular and mainstream storytelling has the power to transform lives of audiences/populations in profound ways. Storytelling gives impulse to behavioural change and is instrumental in:

• Empowering populations through elucidating the various reasons that stall progress and by giving tangible and measurable solutions for facilitating change.
• Informing audiences about their Rights by initiating a rights-based discourse and upholding inclusion across the spectrum of society.
• Facilitating family planning and reproductive health information by initiating and sustaining a dialogue with the relevant groups and facilitating/championing positive health-seeking behaviour through storytelling.
• Disseminating information on sustainability through sharing knowledge and suggesting creative ways of applying it so as to effect behaviour change.
• Sensitizing audiences about the environment and inspiring individuals, groups and communities who take specific steps towards progress.
• Influencing Behaviours by leading audiences to adopt best practices across all traditional and contemporary paradigms of change.

Creative Services

The program provides the following services to Networks/ Studios and Creative Communities:

1. Free-On-Demand service for producers/ directors/ writers - Consultations is facilitated between content creators and experts/ specialists from across various fields of expertise. The fields of expertise include (but are not limited to) medicine, surgery, physical and mental health and wellbeing, nutrition, law, gender, social development, human rights, policy and governance.  
2. Customized Programs/ Workshops – Creation and provision of required tools for Script Writers/ Programming Executives/ Creative Leaders that help them drive their entertainment products towards impacting audiences/ populations significantly.
3. Design and Implementation of Research Strategies – Provision of Strategies and Tools for Networks/ Studios to measure the impact of their entertainment products across demographics. This includes but is not limited to developing a customized strategy, devising a masterplan with timelines and making an appropriate research plan for measurement of impact.  
4. Web Engagement – The program designs, develops and creates web campaigns on contemporary issues and distributes them strategically across both web and mobile platforms. Besides a powerful presence across all contemporary and popular social media platforms the program reaches out to writers, producers, network and studio executives through its websites www.acee-thethirdeye.net and through it Web News Portal, The Daily Eye www.thedailyeye.info.
5. Consultation for Distribution of Content for Maximum Impact – Construction of Innovative designs to capture large audiences and outreach plans for individual entertainment vehicles so as to maximize their reach, ensuring penetration to the last mile through innovative distribution of content.
6. Customized Immersions – Showcasing the existing contemporary social realities through carefully guided field-based activities, which foster relevant insights to build stories enriched with realism.
7. Facilitating Partnerships - Connecting entertainment vehicles with grass-root organisations and promoting/ facilitating direct interactions between creative communities and their audiences.
8. Story Integrations - Developing Templates and Designs for seamless integration of specially selected messages to existing storylines and measuring their impact.
9. Co-Creating - Collaborating with creative leaderships/ programming executives/ writers and partnering for development of stories and screenplays.

Strategic Media Solutions: Workshops and Innovations for Development Partners

The Program provides the following services to its partners:

1. Filmmaking Workshops for children of government schools and children belonging to marginalised and socially excluded communities and their documentation and creation of short films/ content for digital release.
2. Training Programs for frontline workers on use of media/ entertainment as a tool for communication and their documentation.
3. Facilitating Partnerships between organisations working at the grassroots and entertainment vehicles from across genres and platforms, that stand to benefit both stakeholders.
4. Impact Evaluation and Documentation of Programs conducted by government and non-government organisations working for children, women, the elderly, physically and mentally challenged as also marginalised and excluded communities.
5. Organization of Events, Discussions, Briefings and Meetings to promote interactions between experts, specialists and leaderships of popular entertainment and content creators.
6. Making Interventions in popular entertainment/ mainstream media (all vehicles from traditional to contemporary) on contemporary issues of relevance in society, and measuring their impact.