WWD Case Study
World Water Day 2026: H2O Consortium
Field Storytelling / CSR Communications
During field production for a World Water Day CSR initiative tied to a $52 million water treatment infrastructure contract in Rwanda, one student poet caught my attention. Among a group of performers, her delivery stood apart: fast, precise, entirely from memory, in the tradition of Rwandan performative art. We kept the camera focused on her until the thunderous applause.
When I later had the poem translated, it revealed something remarkable: near the close, she uses the word "Gatashya," invoking ancestral legacy in a gesture that carries deep cultural weight. None of this was in the brief, but I built the film around her because I could see the value in this unexpected situation.
The poet and the poem didn't just represent the CSR project, they elevated it. Senior leadership across the H2O Consortium requested copies for distribution on their own platforms and channels.
That outcome came from years of working with human stories, where intuition and experience meet in the moment to make something irresistibly poignant and shareable.
The video is here: