It’s that time of the year again. Each of us has our own personal spring rituals: spring cleaning, gardening, festivals, races, or baseball. But here at the World Bank multimedia department, warmer weather and cherry blossoms means it’s time to haul out banners, design graphics, and produce videos in advance of the Spring Meetings. The meetings are for the governors of the World Bank Group and IMF, but they’ve expanded to encompass all the best and brightest ideas about development, innovation, and improving lives.
We live in a fast-changing world, so we spend a lot of time trying to come up with new and exciting ways to inform people about the World Bank Group’s goal to end extreme poverty, and we especially want to engage young people. So that’s why, last year, we introduced PabsyLive. It’s a web-based video series aimed at increasing awareness about the World Bank Group with young online audiences around the world. Our colleague, Michelle ‘Pabsy’ Pabalan, who manages our YouTube channel, interviews speakers, experts, and VIPs with some pretty disarming questions and a lot of offbeat personality.
Pabsy’s first interview was with World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim. She went on to discuss entrepreneurship with Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, talk about open data with Hans Rosling and had tennis star Novak Djokovic explain the importance of early childhood development. She even interviewed an astronaut! Five of her interviews made our Top Ten Youtube List for 2015, and her interview with Hans Rosling has close to 90,000 views.
PabsyLive
A young professional and a native of the Philippines, Pabsy has become our star reporter and a trusted voice with young people. Her interviews capture a wide range of World Bank Group issues: agriculture and sustainability, food and water security, childhood development, forced marriage, climate change, microfinance, transportation, labor issues and regulations, and digital dividends.
Everyone is united on our twin goals to end poverty and boost shared prosperity and together, we make a pretty fascinating team. So please send your suggestions on who Pabsy should interview next. Let’s make an effort to feature different voices and different perspectives.
As for Spring Meetings 2016? Well, stay tuned. We have some innovative and engaging PabsyLive videos in the pipeline, including Pabsy’s very first Facebook Live video broadcast. Make sure to stay tuned on Facebook and follow us on YouTube all week. We promise it will be fun and informative.
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