Living Earth Television

Living Earth Television (LETV) is a Chicago-based nonprofit organization that intends to launch a global satellite channel in 2011. The organization develops programming from documentaries made by filmmakers around the world.
LETV will make its debut with a series focused on modern China, and will broadcast the first documentary in the group through a relationship with Link TV, a nationwide television network dedicated to providing Americans with global perspectives on news, events and culture.
One of the unique features of LETV is the use of films made by people living in the culture being observed. This requires translation, but captures the vision of insiders looking at their own culture, rather than outsiders focusing on what is unusual or even bizarre in a different land. The result is a better lense to the universality of human culture and the human experience, in which the challenges and dramas faced by people in a completely different culture are somehow accessible as if we were sitting in the house of a new friend - rather than in front of a TV set with no connection to the people in the film. This approach presents challenges, but because it uses existing films, the process can be far less expensive and can result in exceptional opportunities for bridging cultures and setting the stage for deeper understanding.
Mission
The goal of LETV is to promote peace and understanding among cultures by broadcasting the real stories of ordinary people from the viewpoint of that culture.
Founder
Martha M. Foster is the founder and executive director of LETV. She began LETV in 2002.
Foster, who has worked for the Smithsonian Institution, the Chicago Field Museum and Chicago Public Television, is one of North America's specialists in international documentary film-making and television programming.
She has acted in conjunction with universities, museums and festivals in the United States and abroad for nearly 30 years to further the craft of international documentary creation. In 2008, she served as a judge for the Jade Kunlun Awards-2008 World Mountain Documentary Festival of Qinghai, China.
Foster has won five Emmy awards. She was selected as an "Influential Woman in Business" by the National Association of Women Business Owners in 2003.
Friends of LETV
*Arun Gandhi, Director, MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence
*Jerome McDonnell, Host, Worldview, National Public Radio (NPR)
*Adlai E. Stevenson III, Former U.S. Senator from Illinois
*Jim Kenney, Executive Director, Common Ground
*The Jane Goodall Institute
*Ren Yuan, Professor, China University of Communications
*Rick Ulfik, Executive Director, We The World
*Michael Terrien, Founder, Play For Peace
*Preston Scott, Director, World Foundation For Environment and Development
*Sharon Kristjanson, Founder and President, Connecting Cultures Through Understanding
*Robert V. Thompson, Board of Trustees, Council For A Parliament of World's Religions
*Judy Rodgers, Director, Images And Voices Of Hope
*The Institute Of Noetic Sciences
*The Heifer Project
*Visions Of A Better World Foundation
*Wayne Teasdale, Author (1945 - 2004)

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