News » City Talks: What one episode made possible

City Talks is a program produced at Access Tucson, and won a prestigious WAVE award at this years ACM West conference.

Chris Mongomery, the producer, had this to say about the winning episode:
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• Bruce Whitmire of Living Water International, who was featured on this episode, donated the use of his agency’s well-drilling equipment to drill 10 water wells in Benin, West Africa (at a cost of $30,000.00 U.S. dollars each), saving tens of thousands of lives that would otherwise have been ended by water-borne diseases and dying of thirst.
• This episode has helped to rally support from various groups across the U.S. to aid Benin in the areas of education, healthcare, water, electricity, housing, economics, etc. and (our host Robert’s favotite) childrens’ hospitals and orphanages, as well as building tolerance and understanding between different religious groups and points of view, and bringing American heroes and heroines to the forefront in Africa.
• As a result of this program, a 3-day concert for 50,000 people in Africa was put together by Russian satellite broadcaster Yaniv Lior of RRSAT.
• This episode has opened up invitations for our organization from numerous countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean, a success we believe was possible only because we stayed loyal to access programming and program content, instead of taking the opportunities we had to pursue broadcast television, with big budgets - but also with changes to our program’s format that we could not accept.
• During the filming of this episode, the opportunity was opened by State Representative Leah Landrum of the Arizona House of Representatives for us to do monthly exclusive feeds from the State Capitol. This is something we are still in the process of preparing a crew to pursue.
• The episode also helped adoption agencies endorsed by the White House to facilitate increased international adoptions of children from overseas.
• Our organization received a Golden Heart Award from the International Army of Compassion for our efforts to aid the advancement of developing African nations.
• The success of this episode encouraged our host, Robert Choate, to complete his first book, entitled City Talks: A Chauffeur’s Healing Confessions, to be published soon.

Chris Montgomery
“City Talks”