--- title: Two Activists on How They Knew They Wanted to Change the World | TIME description: Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a documentary filmmaker, sit down and discuss starting transformation around the world. canonical: https://time.com/video/rtI4aANS/ og:title: Two Activists on How They Knew They Wanted to Change the World og:description: Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a documentary filmmaker, sit down and discuss starting transformation around the world. og:url: https://time.com/video/rtI4aANS/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/rtI4aANS/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Two Activists on How They Knew They Wanted to Change the World twitter:description: Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a documentary filmmaker, sit down and discuss starting transformation around the world. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/rtI4aANS/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Two Activists on How They Knew They Wanted to Change the World > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Two Activists on How They Knew They Wanted to Change the World [Watch (HLS stream): Two Activists on How They Knew They Wanted to Change the World](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/rtI4aANS.m3u8) (5:11)  _Published 2016-04-28. Ben Rattray, founder of Change.org, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a documentary filmmaker, sit down and discuss starting transformation around the world._ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:01 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [WEF24 TIME100 Davos Dinner: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy Toast](/video/fcehxy6Y/) ### WEF24 TIME100 Davos Dinner: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy Toast [Chinese Documentary Filmmaker Chen Xiaoqing on His Approach to Food Documentaries](/video/IRZCNcW4/) ### Chinese Documentary Filmmaker Chen Xiaoqing on His Approach to Food Documentaries [TIME 100: How Ben Rattray's Change.org Goes Viral](/video/OQLk10vA/) ### TIME 100: How Ben Rattray's Change.org Goes Viral --- ## Transcript Individual people can't just start an individual campaign, [ CROSSTALK ] but spark a movement. Change. org. What is change. org? The ease with which we can enable people to participate in change as a feature, not a buck. My name is Ben Rattray, founder in. Of change. org. My name is Sharmeen Obaid- Chinoy, I'm a documentary film- maker, and my recent film just won an Academy Award this year. This is what happens when determined women get together. I feel like our role is just to spark this conversation. If we can get a country to talk about an issue that they otherwise were not talking about that's where we are most successful. [ MUSIC ] So, you didn't want to obviously start Change. org when you were ten years old. What did you want to do? I wanted to be an investment banker. My god. And it didn't change for me until my senior year I stand for it and I go home for winter holiday and I talk to one of my younger brother who comes out as gay. Total unexpected to me and then he says the things that transformed my life he says, the things that was most painful about being a closeted gay American at the time weren't the people that were explicitly anti- gay but those who refuse to stand up and speak out against them. Than. People like me when I was more ashamed than, than I ever had been before. And it was the first in that cause me the really deeper fact than what I wanted to do with my life. Somebody you know credited documentary film about your life. And I gonna find the biggest laborers or interventions that made you who do first Saying you are because you are quite remarkable. What are those big interventions? When I was very young I used to go to school through a neighborhood that was relatively poor. And I would look at the children on the streets and I would wonder why I was in a car and they were on the street. And very early on I realized that it had nothing to do with me, it was a luck of the draw. That I could have just as easily been out in the street and they could have been in the car. I could have been born in Pakistan but born into a family that didn't value women's education. I could have been married off when I was 15, 16- years- old. And so I used to be very angry when I was young. And my mother told me very early on that I should channel my anger in writing. And so I started writing. I was 17 and I did this big expose which landed me into a lot of trouble and My name was spray painted with profanities across my gate. I came from a progressive family. But, my father was also a very protective man. The morning that he went out, and saw my name Spray- painted with all of these profanities. He said I don't know what you've gone and done, but they have spray- painted your name and then he stopped. I half- expected him to say stop writing. And instead he said something to me that has really always stayed with me. He said that if you speak the truth, I will stand with you and so will the world. That's the one thing that I think is remarkable, is that It's only when you're creating change that one receives immense backlash. People in power don't care when the things we're doing aren't having an effect. And so it's almost the case that when you see negative reaction, either in masses or by elites That you actually know that you're having an impact. Do you ever think that the work that you do might take people away from being active participants and just becoming kind of keyboard warriors? Early on Time when we, about five years ago, this [ INAUDIBLE ] disparaging work, slacktivism as if people are taking action online and because of that it absolves them the feeling of civic responsibility, necessary to drive them to go offline. The reality is all that, that indicates and all our experiences. That there's a ladder of engagement, that the best way to get people engaged early on in issues actually providing not difficult means of onboarding but actually the easiest way to first get engage and sometimes signing a petition, it's a beginning and not the end of one's experience. The ease with which we can enable people to participate in change is Feature not a bug. One of the things as a filmmaker, sometimes people say well, they have a tremendous amount of activists who've been working on this for decades. Now you've just come in and done one film and gone off. I feel like our role is just to spark that conversation. If we can get a country to talk about an issue that they're otherwise would not talking about and had those activists Kind of find something that will help them get to the next stage. I feel like that's where we are most successful. Here are the nominees for best documentary, short subject. Everybody who reads the Academy Awards, the pundits all 22 of them said I wasn't gonna win, so I took my mother to walk the red carpet with me. I had a baby recently and I haven't been able to wear high heel shoes after that, so I took of my shoes and I was wearing flip- flops, and my mother kept saying, you know your Time is gonna be, they're gonna be calling your category very soon. And I was like no mom, I'm not winning, don't worry about it. So, I'm wearing flip- flops. [ LAUGH ] And then my category announcement time comes. And before I could say the next thing, they'd called up my name. A Girl in the River, the Prize of Forgiveness. And so I went on stage to accept my academy award wearing flip- flops. My mother. She's like who asked for Flops to accept the Academy Awards? And I was like, I didn't think I was gonna win. 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