Can a film about one hard-working woman, shot almost exclusively in living rooms and delivery rooms, make a difference in health policy on the federal and local level? Could The New York Times and People Magazine possibly be interested? Can the documentary also live on as an interactive training tool?

Yes, if the film is as authentic as A Doula Story, and if it has the kind of engagement strategy AV cooked up with The Kindling Group. The film, which tells the story of community-based doula Loretha Weisinger and the pregnant teens she works with in Chicago, captures the essence of community-based health while offering a provocative look at teen pregnancy, early child education and women's empowerment.

The Kindling Group's Executive Director Daniel Alpert was ambitious and strategic. He didn't want viewers to see this as just another story about the endless cycle of teen pregnancy; instead, he wanted to inspire communities to reexamine the needs of low-income women and create the kinds of perinatal support services he documented in this hour-long film.

AV was right there with him, from helping write a persuasive grant proposal to meet these objectives, to creating a structure for selecting five viable communities in which to replicate the doula program, to fully implementing the A Doula Story Community Campaign.

"The stakes were high," says Alpert. "We had funders, partners, and most importantly, the women and teenaged girls in the film who trusted us to make a difference with this story. AV understood that intimate work like this has to be respectfully handled and aggressively launched."

In Seattle, Cleveland, Chicago, the Bay Area and Washington, D.C., AV convened small handpicked gatherings of public administrators, teen advocates, educators, maternal health experts and funders to watch A Doula Story and discuss whether or not they could replicate the program locally (currently, at least two of these sites are making plans to do so). Building on the productivity of those meetings, AV took a short "policy" version of the film to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where we had the opportunity to present the film and the campaign to key national organizations and congressional staffers. As a result, Senator Dick Durbin-D/IL, with the support of Senator Barack Obama-D/IL, Senator Lisa Murkowski-R/AK and Senator Mary Landrieu-D/LA, have submitted a request of $1 million for the 2007 federal budget to fund community-based doula programs across the country.

The momentum was too strong to stop there. AV and Kindling extended our work into a second, more focused phase, where we built partnerships in new sites, devised creative and productive ways for communities to work with the film and enhanced existing resource materials. Specifically, we married a multi-use resource guide and the documentary into an interactive DVD that includes themed segments, built-in discussion questions and electronic versions of campaign materials to help organizations and individuals use the film to best meet their needs. To make it even more accessible, we translated the entire DVD into Spanish and tested it to make sure it was culturally appropriate in Latino communities. To guarantee it would reach key audiences, national partners like Doulas of North America and Healthy Teen Network are helping distribute this user-friendly DVD, and happily keeping 10% of the profits!

"This documentary and campaign helped put the practice of community-based doulas on the map and has laid the groundwork for long-term change," says Phyllis Glink of the Irving Harris Foundation. Because of the A Doula Story Campaign, Loretha Weisinger's positive message is reaching communities across the country and having a ripple effect on future generations. As Weisinger told The New York Times in an article about the film, "The main thing that I think I'm doing is giving [young women] their voice. If you don't speak up for yourself, it's hard for you to teach your children to speak up. [The community-based doula program] is a way of helping them help their children."