THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Special Project

Special Project

Ava Media Provides Housing & Aid for Families in Need

Entered in Local Campaign

Objective

Low-income and poverty affect many families across the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Elderly individuals, people with chronic illness, widows, and orphans are disproportionately impacted by conflict and instability. Families often live in unsafe housing, lack healthcare, and struggle to access basic necessities. Children cannot attend school, and many survive on less than $100 a month.

In response, Ava Media launched Khori Ava (Ava's Sun) in Spring 2025 as its flagship humanitarian television program. The mission was simple yet urgent: provide safe housing, financial aid, healthcare, and dignity to families most forgotten by society. The program leverages Ava Media’s trusted platform, telling real human stories while connecting families with donors and institutions that can help.

Unlike traditional reporting, Khori Ava goes beyond storytelling. Each episode identifies families in extreme poverty or crisis, documents their struggles with dignity, and then mobilizes real-time support. Through transparent, community-driven reporting amplified across broadcast and digital platforms, Khori Ava became a bridge between vulnerable people and those able to provide aid.

The goals are twofold:

  1. Deliver urgent, tangible support to families in crisis — homes, medical care, financial stability.

  2. Demonstrate the power of media to drive systemic change by restoring public trust in charitable giving, modeling accountability, and setting a new standard for results-oriented humanitarian storytelling.

In just one season, Khori Ava transformed hundreds of lives and reached millions of viewers, proving that media can do more than inform — it can directly change lives.

Strategy

Implementing Khori Ava on such a large scale required a unique strategy blending media, transparency, and grassroots action. The foundation of the program was community-driven storytelling: identify families in crisis, document their situations authentically, and immediately connect them with donors through advocacy, networking, and community mobilization.

Community Identification & Partnerships

The first step was mapping affected communities across the Kurdistan Region. This required close collaboration with community leaders, grassroots organizations, and local authorities to ensure accurate identification of families in urgent need. By relying on trusted networks, Ava Media was able to reach the most marginalized groups — elderly, widows, orphans, and those with chronic illness — and validate their cases.

Transparent, Media-Driven Model

Transparency was central to the program. Past scandals and fraud in the aid sector had eroded trust, so Khori Ava introduced a fully visible process. Families’ stories were told with sensitivity and dignity, while live updates, on-air reports, and social media posts documented every step of aid delivery. Viewers could see in real time how donations were collected, distributed, and transformed into housing, food, and medical support. 

The production team combined traditional television with digital-first storytelling. Every broadcast was amplified across Ava Media’s social media platforms, reaching millions of users who could immediately engage by sharing, donating, or commenting. People and organizations stepped in to support. With one organization as the main donor and partner of the program, Haji Idrees Surchi charity Foundation. This approach not only expanded reach but also mobilized grassroots giving.

Logistics & Implementation

Executing Khori Ava required a dedicated team to coordinate multiple complex processes simultaneously: live production, fundraising, transportation of supplies, construction of homes, and distribution of aid. Despite the scale, the program achieved remarkable speed — 100% of homes were delivered within the promised timeframe, and all funds raised were delivered directly to beneficiaries without administrative deductions. 

Audience Engagement & Impact

The emotional, narrative-driven style of Khori Ava distinguished it from news reporting. Viewers didn’t just watch stories of hardship; they witnessed solutions in action. The program built a feedback loop where audiences trusted Ava Media, engaged online, and saw immediate, measurable results from their involvement.

In doing so, Khori Ava established a new model for humanitarian broadcasting: media not as a bystander to suffering, but as an active facilitator of change.

Results

In its first season, Khori Ava exceeded all expectations — delivering life-changing impact within just one month of launch.

Direct Housing Impact

Financial Transparency & Aid

Community Support

Social Media Reach

Systemic Change

Khori Ava not only transformed the lives of vulnerable families but also proved that trusted media can be a role model for accountability, dignity, and systemic humanitarian impact.

Media

Video for Ava Media Provides Housing & Aid for Families in Need

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Entrant Company / Organization Name

Ava Media

Link

Entry Credits