Post Tagged with: "african"

Making New Ground

Farmland that had reverted to dust after years of drought is being reclaimed through innovative methods. Thanks to Matemai Mbira Group of Harare, Zimbabwe for the use of their beautiful music in this piece.

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Sevu & the Sand Dam

Want to know what real hunger is like?  Don’t ask an American. The video below, narrated by Sevu, a small farmer in Kenya, gives the most poignant description of hunger I’ve ever heard.  Luckily, that’s not all this video is about. It used to be that the seasonal river that runs through Sevu’s village would quickly become dry again a few days after the rain.  Now, however, a series of small sand dams stationed throughout its course have kept the river flowing and have allowed Sevu and his family to farm year-round, thereby increasing their income and access to food.  Sevu and the family are doing so well now, in fact, that he was able to place an international phone call to me yesterday just to see how my wife and I are doing.  The dams are part of a larger program introduced in the area by Lutheran World Relief to[…]

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From Burden to Blessing

The dawn of the new millennium cast a dark pall over the Southern African nation of Malawi.  The county faced a food crisis that was, in part, fueled by the loss of agricultural workforce due to AIDS-related deaths.  The national HIV prevalence rate was at 16%, and as high as 30% among pregnant women.  With the coming of anti-retroviral medication (ARVs) in 2003, NGOs and systems of government rushed to educate HIV positive people, who had by now organized into peer support groups within their communities.  Essential steps taken by these groups to living positively with the disease included good nutrition, practicing abstinence and safe sex, proper ARV adherence, as well as learning how to give home-based care to bed-ridden HIV positive peers in the community. Ten years later, support group members are not only some of the healthiest-looking people in their communities, they’re also talking to their negative or[…]

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Leave it to the Experts: Innovative HIV Programs in Malawi

We’ve reached a global hinge point in the treatment of HIV.  People living with the disease are no longer passive beneficiaries.  After more than a decade of receiving health and nutrition training, HIV+ people are often times living healthier lifestyles than many of their negative peers.  Catholic Relief Services‘ Expert Client program places trained HIV+ community members in local health facilities where they guide new patients through the rigors of anti-retroviral treatment (ARV).  By using their own experience of living with the disease to counsel and mentor, they empower the new patients to live more healthy and productive lives.  I recently shot and produced this video for CRS in southern Malawi.  The program is funded by USAID.

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Catching Up | Summer, 2014

See what’s been happening lately in my work and life. Special thanks to Andrew Ladson from MCC for the photos of me from Namibia, and to Lauren Matthews for the wedding video.

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Crafting a Future

Many NGO’s focus on building livelihoods through agriculture. What about the people that live in areas where crop production is literally not a viable option? Kenya’s Emali district has been hit by recurring drought for the last decade, making farming next to impossible. In this documentary short, which I shot and edited, we see the blueprint of a grant from the Government of New Zealand implemented by ChildFund Kenya called “Building Resources in Two Drought Affected Communities.” As our narrators tell us, the aim of the program is not just to build secure livelihoods of the program’s participants, but also to preserve precious and unique cultural traditions and craftwork among the Kamba and Maasai peoples in Emali. Along the way we get an idea of the artists’ creation process and even a beauty tip from the Maasai. The program has made quite a splash in New Zealand media. 3News, Dominion[…]

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Seeing My Wild Side

My passion is to tell people’s stories. Sometimes, however, I find myself in places of incredible natural beauty where creatures other than humans make their dwelling.  Already this year I’ve had no shortage of close encounters with the animal kingdom. The footage above and a few of the photographs below were taken as part of an assignment for Millennium Challenge Corporation to illustrate the aid agency’s economic and tourism development programs in Namibia’s Etosha National Park.  Other photographs were taken during a family vacation in Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, some while on my honeymoon in Mauritius, and others still while shooting out of a moving vehicle during an assignment in Tanzania. Above, the mighty Nile River squeezes itself into a 23 foot gap of surging water at Murchison Falls. Above is Chamarel Waterfall in Mauritius; below are Namibia’s Etendeka Mountains as viewed from the Grootberg Lodge. On a[…]

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Essential Amharic

If there are any words a faranji, or foreigner, might be likely to learn when visiting Ethiopia, wuha and injera would easily make the top five; the former meaning water in Amharic, Ethiopia’s official language, the latter not having an English equivalent. Much of my recent time in Ethiopia was spent documenting the problems associated with getting wuha, easily the most fundamental of life’s necessities, but sadly quite hard to come by in a number of places in the world.  The video I shot and produced above shows the difficulties that people living in some rural areas of south-central Ethiopia have in accessing the resource.  Fast-paced and polished, this video will be used by ChildFund, Australia in an upcoming campaign to bring water to the area. Ethiopia is not entirely water-scarce; I hate to give that impression.  There are places in the country where cattle graze in plentiful, green pasture alongside rolling[…]

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Don’t Forget to Write!

I’ve just completed a series of videos for ChildFund, International on how sponsors and sponsored children interact with each other.  Sponsorship is about much more than sending money each month.  It’s about corresponding and encouraging children in developing countries, as well as learning about those countries and their cultures. This short spot shows how Margaret, from Uganda, and her sponsor’s family in California, keep in touch via snail mail, and how her sponsor’s family shares in the dreams for her future.  Of the three videos I created in the series Margaret’s profile was my favorite, though you can see others here on Youtube. Skeptical about sponsorship? I have to admit that I was too. You might find an article by Christianity Today, and the science behind it, surprising.  It’s written from a faith-based perspective, but the principles laid out here carry over to secular organizations as well.

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Unlocking Potential – Senegal

A seedling that doesn’t receive enough water and sunlight in it’s infancy cannot grow into a fruitful tree. In the same way, a child who doesn’t receive love and proper care cannot realize his full potential as an adult, should he be fortunate enough to survive into adulthood. ChildFund’s Early Childhood Development (ECD) Program in Senegal is working in immensely challenging conditions to empower parents and caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to properly nurture their children at this crucial stage in life. This is last in a series of six videos from the same number of countries I shot and edited for ChildFund’s new iPad app which exploring the different facets and successes of the ECD program. Special thanks to ChildFund’s Christine Ennulat for the creative input here. Here’s some other fun shots from a stroll down the beach in Dakar:  

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