Good Eye Video's Blog

Presenting the new Good Eye Video website!

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:39:00 +0000

To all our faithful blog readers.... we wanted you to be the first to know that we've just launch a new website! This has been a project long in the making and we're excited to give you all the first look. Please visit the new blog page and subscribe to continuing getting all of our blogs and thanks as always for your support!

The 99%- Here for a reason

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:41:00 +0000

Like many people, we've been wondering what Occupy Wall St. is all about. The constant refrain in the media has been "What's their platform?" "What are their demands?" "Do they have a good reason to be there?" So we went down on Wednesday to find out.

This video is a product of an amazing afternoon spent with people from all backgrounds who want to see a more just and sustainable society. Their reasons were diverse, but their energy and excitement seemed singular. As people who spend most of our waking hours trying to help tell the world about social change, this seems like an opportunity of a lifetime. Yes there were punks, burnt sage and some signs on the crazier end of things... but what I saw was a group of people longing for meaning. If it takes time to tell this story, we're ready to play our part.

I'll leave you with this story of a woman we met... a laid off social worker. When we asked her to write down her reason for coming down, she sat for a long time just staring at the poster board. I asked if she needed help and she turned to me,"I've just seen so much suffering... so many kids and families.... it's hard to put into words."

Finally she wrote down "I'm here to stand in solidarity with others that give a damn."

And she did.

AFS- Dear American Mom

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:42:00 +0000

We created this video in the form of a letter to the host moms of AFS, an international exchange org who is also one of our favorite clients. This was shot very quickly over a single day with the help of YES program scholars from around the world. It was interesting to collaborate with the students on the script and title card creation.... a fusion of user-generated and professional content.

We are looking forward to using more creative formats like this to tell stories as big as international exchange.

Remembering 9/11 with Brooklyn Heights

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:31:00 +0000

We marked the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 by participating in a multimedia program at beautiful St. Ann & the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights. Our contribution was creating several videos for the afternoon, which provided the voice and feel of the community's experience during that historic event. 9/11 is of course burned into our collective memory, so it was refreshing to experience it again through the personal stories of Brooklyn's hardest hit neighborhood. It was also a blast to spend a late summer day roaming around Brooklyn trying to capture the beauty and diversity of our home borough.

Democracy looks like someone's mom

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:52:00 +0000

The ruined presidential palace in Port Au Prince

On Fonkoze’s website there is this tagline: Building the Economic Foundations for Democracy in Haiti.

Now often we run into taglines that sound awesome, but don’t really jive with an organization's activity. Fonkoze’s tagline is not aspirational. If anything I think it’s the best descriptor I’ve seen so far of what they do.

Democracy seems to be a notion that’s been on the tip of the tongue here for hundreds of years. Without going into Haitian history, let’s just say the people of Haiti are still waiting. And among the things that Haitian’s seem to want (health care, education, food security, to not live in tents) democracy is a real root desire.

Underneath the loans or the vitamins or the insurance… beyond any of the services Fonkoze provides, there is this subtle current of democracy. The women who come together in solidarity groups are really enacting a deep desire to participate, to be involved in something that isn’t corrupt or coercive. And it seems like with every new group of Fonkoze women there are five more Haitians for whom Democracy is a real living, breathing thing.

Now as far as I understand it, Haiti has a long way to go in terms of political democracy. And I assume the tagline refers to the fact that with greater economic possibilities, political democracy can be built. But I can't help smiling when I think of this growing tide of women who are meeting each day to practice democracy.

Today I'm back in Brooklyn, a day after my own country's democratic low point. What sticks with me most from our weeks in Haiti is this longing for opportunity, this resistance to hopelessness. When people have asked about our trip, I've had nothing adequate to say. But maybe it's just that we saw a little hope in a hopeless place... and it looked a lot like someone's mom.

It's all about the kids

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:44:00 +0000

The “Solid Women” blew me away with their generosity and poise. It’s not easy to do with multiple cameras in your face.

Even as we said “no no, we promise… this is the last shot!” they would smile and let us get what we needed. We sat all five women down for an interview, and asked a long list of questions that were translated from English into Kreyol: What was your life like before joining Fonkoze? What business do you run with your loan? What are your hopes for the future?

The answers to the last question has stuck with me: What are your hopes for the future? I ask. Some of them mentioned briefly the hope of finishing the renovations on their homes or expanding their business, but the conversation always turned back to their children. I hope my children have better than I have had. From school fees to food to emergency savings it was all linked to this pack of rascally kids who surrounded us as we worked.

If you’ve seen almost any of the videos we make, you might know that we have been lucky to meet kids all over the world with beautiful smiles and quick wits who are kind enough to contribute their magic to our work. The kids we met in this village outside of Les Cayes were no different: polite, energetic, sassy, excited to see their pictures. Knowing that Fonkoze's work trickles down to these small toothy grins is, in short, pretty awesome.

There is no Yellow Brick Road

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:26:00 +0000

I’m not sure what I thought micro-finance would be like. Maybe after a small loan a woman wakes up the next day and presto!, finds a thriving business that enables her to build a brand new house and send her kids to good schools. I suspect most of the criticism of micro-credit comes from notions like this.

The truth is there is no yellow brick road out of poverty. Instead we’ve watched as Fonkoze provides companion services with their financial ones. Not because it’s a nice thing to do, but because they know that each client is a real human being with many intertwined challenges.

We shot our group of Solid Women at education classes (a few of them can’t read, but decided to skip the literacy module in favor of the business module). There was a vitamin distribution, where children got essential vitamins. And even micro-insurance that helped women deal with the inevitable frailty of their businesses.

And that’s the beauty of Fonkoze… they’ve created a network where any services that might benefit clients can be implemented and integrated with micro-finance. Most importantly I think the women feel that Fonkoze isn’t just a piggy bank, I think they take their commitment to the program pretty seriously. One women we met was in her 60’s and just starting literacy classes. When we asked why she smiled and said simply “I didn’t want to die without knowing how to read.”

This is slow work… often without fireworks. But these women are moving.

Poverty is Misery

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:15:00 +0000

What an uplifiting title for this post.... I bet you're excited to read.

During our interviews (conducted in kreyol) the Solid Women use the word misery and the word poverty interchangeably. When you see the life of a Haitian peasant up close, the opportunities for misery peak out of every nook and cranny.

Lozelle told us that when the weather is bad, she “tells her children to patient.” When that doesn’t work, they eat leaves from a nearby tree. Mariette (the vivacious group leader) is a mover and shaker. But she couldn’t build her business with the loans from loan sharks that charged up to 20% interest. Perhaps most heartbreaking was Seden’s story. She told us, “I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything.” In the end, misery can manifest itself in this state of paralysis. We’ve seen it often here in Haiti…. people just sitting on the side of a busy street. Waiting.

Fonkoze did not erase misery from these women’s lives. On the contrary each day brings a new struggle. But for each of them it seems the first time in their lives they’ve been provided with an active opportunity to change their circumstances. In fact it was the other four women who came to Seden and said “You can’t just sit around all day. Come on… get up, we’re going to join Fonkoze together.” And they did.

I keep coming back to the above picture of Seden. As we take photos/videos we're hoping to balance the beauty evident in the country, work and faces of these women, with the reality that misery exist in abundance here. There is something subtle about her look that works in this direction...there is a nuance I can't put into words.

Solid Women

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 03:56:00 +0000

These five women are what brought us to Haiti. They call themselves “Solid Women”, but individually (and less imposingly) they are Marriette, Seden, Lozelle, Antonia and Joseline.

When we first approached Fonkoze about helping to tell their story, we were eager to see what micro-finance looked and felt like up close. Most of us have been exposed to the idea of micro-finance in the form of Kiva or Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, but broadly MF means financial services for the poor. It turns out that millions of poor people through out the world can activate their entrepreneurial potential when given access to small loans.

Our work at Good Eye Video has taken us through the wide and varied galaxy of approaches to solving social problems and micro-finance struck us as one of the most elegant and inspiring. At the same time I know MF has been criticized in recent years for either over stating its effect on poverty reduction or leaving many of the poorest untouched. Which story to tell?

I’d like to say we found some answers, but I think what we experienced was much more important. Over the course of a week we visited each of these Solid Women, in their homes as well as shooting their various business ventures. We learned lots… in the next few posts we’ll share some of our biggest takeaways.

The NEGES Foundation

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 13:19:00 +0000

(note: due to a combination of internet scarcity, lots of shooting and generally getting into the pace of Haitian life... we have a few blog posts going up a bit late)

As we've come to discover, Haiti and the US are intertwined in a deep and fascinating way. First of all 1.2 million Haitians are our fellow Americans. These diaspora communities exist in cities like Miami, New York and Boston and are responsible for almost half of the national income of Haiti (estimated $1.2-$1.5 billion annually in remittances)

Lucky for us, Brooklyn is full of Haitians.... and that's where our next project got its start. We ran into the NEGES foundation through friends at Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture. This small community development project is led by Yoleine Gateau Esposito and James Philemy, two Haitian Americans who wanted to help develop the educational opportunities in Léogâne, a coastal community about an hour outside of Port au Prince.

The 2010 earthquake destroyed nearly 90% of the structures in Léogâne (which was at the epicenter). This of course was heartbreaking for a small development project like NEGES, built up over the course of years with small donations and lavish amounts of personal time and commitment.

We only had a few hours to stop by NEGES, but we were given a tour in the power of resilience. The drive to Léogâne leaves no doubt about the impact of the quake... rubble and destruction still line the road. There are tent cities everywhere. Which makes it all the more remarkable that inside the gates of NEGES we found a primary school fashioned out of shipping containers ready to receive its first classes. We found a Women's center, community space and a beautiful little restaurant.

There are many arguments we've run into against this kind of small development. It isn't scalable, it's hard to get self sustaining, it can throw the local balance out of whack. But it's the human thing to do. It's the kind of project whose warmth, ambition and attention to detail are evident in all sort of ways. There is something beautiful about people who will build an educational center on a far off island. And then do it again.

We hope our video and pictures can help. If you want to, you can visit http://www.negesfoundation.org/Home.html every dollar makes a difference at a place like NEGES. We heard about many cool programs waiting to be enabled by funding.

A picture of Shada

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 02:19:00 +0000

I leave you with this picture of a slum called Shada. You can see how the awe-inspiring landscape is made even stranger with the addition of ad-hoc structures and a sea of trash. As one doctor said… we all know that places like this exist, but don’t really contemplate it fully until we are walking the alleys of broken concrete and sheet metal. As a storyteller, I’m conflicted about what role images of poverty this powerful should play. It think it’s easy to see this and think it’s a dream… some alternate reality where people live ten to a room next to open sewers. I often find myself falling into the same trap when my vision of a visit to a place is mainly through a viewfinder.

What made Shada real for me was playing an evolving game with a gaggle of joyful, shoeless kids who didn’t speak my language. We played catch with some piece of plastic junk, then wall ball, then bloody knuckles, then they taught me different high fives (the entire time obviously making fun of me in Kreyol). Trying to think of these rascals spending their childhood playing games on the banks of this inlet of trash is the only way Shada seems to exist in the same world I do. At our nice American style hotel I thought of this as the A/C hummed and I was clean from the shower and some part of me was longing to file this picture under D for dream.

Hands up for Haiti

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:25:00 +0000

Hands up for Haiti is one of many small NGO’s that have sprung up in Haiti over the last ten years (and particularly right after the earth quake). Started by several medical doctors who felt called to help the Haitian people, Hands Up has started to hone in on its niche here in northern Haiti: facilitating medical volunteer trips for US doctors, nurses and students. It’s always interesting to work with new organizations as they shape themselves and especially if that task is the daunting one of healing people in a nation notorious for poor public health. Here are a few things we’ve been learning and thinking about.

First of all Haiti is a classic case of development chaos. It’s certainly a place in need of transformation and its proximity to the US seems to only fuel the creation of NGOs of all shapes and sizes. We’ve heard Haitians call Port au Prince the world capital of NGOs. Here in northern Haiti were finding a huge patchwork of groups, often times working like lasers in a dark room… doing good work, but so focused that they seem to leave mere dots of light and lots of dim area. Groups like Hands up for Haiti seem to be aware of this problem and will hopefully lead to better integration and cooperation. It will be interesting to continue learning more about this as we travel south.

Lesson number two is that taking pictures of sick kids never gets easier. I personally feel awful each time we have to capture images of people in vulnerable moments of illness. Thus far we’ve shot in a small local clinic, a clinic in the giant slum of Shada and at a medical training session. The docs we’ve been traveling with report pretty lousy health in most of the patients they encounter. We saw lots of painful looking cases of pneumonia, fever and malnutrition. There was even one person who needed an operation immediately to avoid serious complications. How do you capture this experience? For us it’s been a difficult trade-off between respecting the Haitians we meet and doing what we can do to help support them. I’m thinking I might make up a little badge to wear around my neck wherever I travel to do video work.

Hello, I take pictures to try to help people. These pictures help raise money and sustain projects.

Every person in the world has the right not to be photographed. Please raise your hand if you don’t want your picture taken.

Would this work? Maybe it’s just a tough job that requires us keep in mind that we do this not to be voyeurs, but to change things. I’m not sure I know the answer, but I do know that when I heard later one of the babies I photographed would likely not make it (107 fever… so high the thermometer couldn’t read accurately), I knew that we need to make these videos and pictures count.

PS. Many thanks to our friends at Hands up for Haiti. You made this leg of our journey a pleasure. The work you do is changing lives. And yes... I promise to start taking my B-12 supplement.

Beautiful

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:23:00 +0000

It’s a shame people don’t mention beauty when they talk about Haiti. My first impression looking out of the airplane window was that northern Haiti was simply stunning… a cradle of farmland between mountain ranges. This entire trip we’re hoping to tell an honest story about Haiti, one that involves the immense long-lived suffering of Haitian people, but also one of a place that deserves to have its mountains and old buildings remarked upon…. we do it for Italy and France don’t we? Bermuda? Jamaica? So here lets get started. We begin in Cap Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti and not far from where Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the other half of the world. First up, a video for an organization called Hands Up for Haiti.

Bon jour Haiti

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:35:00 +0000

Remember that earthquake in Haiti? Bad news about a place of which you've only ever heard bad news about? Last year when world attention and charitable pocketbooks turned for a brief moment to Haiti, I found myself feeling helpless. What other stories could be heard amongst the devastating images of destruction and news of despair that flowed hourly to us? As the months passed and new emergencies blossomed, Haiti has remained a place of mysterious hopelessness.

But from our experiences at Good Eye Video, we know that anywhere that people continue to wake up each morning, start a fire, find water, haul mangoes to marketplace... there has to be hope somewhere there. We decided that knowing Haiti in a different way was important challenge to undertake.

In four days we embark on a three week trip to Haiti to shoot videos for two amazing organizations. The first is Hands Up For Haiti http://www.handsupforhaiti.org/, a brand new NGO aiming to facilitate American medical professionals volunteering in Haiti. The second is one of the best regarded poverty alleviation organizations in Haiti, Fonkoze http://www.fonkoze.org/. We'll be telling the Fonkoze story by focusing on a group of five women (one of thousands such solidarity groups in Haiti) who are climbing the staircase out of poverty together.

We hope you'll follow along with us as we learn a little bit more about the Haitian people and the organizations that are working with them to change not only our perception of Haiti, but also the reality of life in the poorest country in the hemisphere.

About Barnard!

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:30:00 +0000

Last fall, we had the pleasure of collaborating with Barnard College to create a sort of comprehensive video for their new website that answers the question... "What is Barnard?" As you can probably imagine, it's not a simple task to create a video that shows off the best of what a college has to offer, in both academics and campus life, while staying true to the student voice AND doing so in 4 minutes.

As an alum myself, it was great to be back on campus talking with these incredible current students and hearing about their college experience. It made me proud to see that, in every student it admits and educates, Barnard is living up to the ideals we're hoping to get across in this video.

So, after many months of prepping, doing test shoots, filming sit-down interviews and taking beautiful shots of every inch of the campus... we are proud to show off the final version!

I'm most excited about the fact that the video can be found on Barnard's homepage, so I've taken a screenshot to commemorate the occasion.

Please have a look at the finished version below, and tell us what you think!

The Olevolos Project - New Video!

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:33:00 +0000

As the Holidays draw near, and we get farther and farther away from our summer trip to Africa, it's been a gift to be able to look through the footage we shot and photos we snapped to remember what an incredible journey we had.

Some of you may remember from our post in June that we had the opportunity to visit The Olevolos Project just outside of Arusha, Tanzania. The Olevolos Project is an organization that strives to "develop young leaders in the Olevolos Village through formal schooling, tutoring programs, and extra-curricular activities." One thing I can attest to from our travels, however, is that it is one thing to say that's what you're about; but it's a very different thing to actually be those things and work towards them every single day. Everyone at The Olevolos Project walks that walk, and does it with a HUGE smile.

Don't take my word for it... just watch our brand new video about The Olevolos Project. It is guaranteed to make you smile!

Energy in Common- Flip that switch!

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:10:00 +0000

The smell of cooking fires.

Certainly one of the sensory souvenirs we left Africa with. Indeed throughout the developing world, energy poverty (lack of access to clean, safe, reliable energy) is something you can physically feel.

Energy in Common is a wonderful organization that uses the fundamentals of micro-finance to help entrepreneurs in the developing world improve their livelihoods through clean, modern energy technologies. In turn, lenders from the developed world get carbon offsets for their investments.

Our 30 sec spot for EIC attempts to tell this story in an energetic and passionate way. Take a watch! Its sure got us looking at every light switch we flip as a small miracle.

NCLEJ - Moving Mountains

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:55:00 +0000

As we are catching up on sharing some of the videos we did earlier this year, we simply can't forget NCLEJ - the National Center for Law and Economic Justice.

NCLEJ is a nonprofit organization that advances the cause of economic justice for low-income families, individuals, and communities. Their work is hugely important and very often overlooked. While NCLEJ doesn't work with individual clients, they do tackle the systematic stuff that ends up moving mountains. It was a challenge to create a video without personal stories, but with the help of solid music and motion graphics, I think we created something that will help add life and vitality each time NCLEJ goes to tell its story.

The Bronx River Alliance- I am the Bronx

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:59:00 +0000

One afternoon late this spring I came upon the boy in this picture skipping rocks with his friends. I should say they were trying to skip rocks. In the Bronx you get the feeling that no matter how streetwise our urban youth may seem, they still have lots to learn out on the water.

Still this kid came right up to me and began to tell me all about his river. We were in Concrete Plant Park, a gorgeous community park developed by the Bronx River Alliance and apparently there were all kinds of cool things to see. He showed me where crabs live under the rocks. He told me about a few of the ducks and who was "with" who. He pointed to the massive scrap metals yards in the distance. I showed him how to skip a rock.

This was the highlight of the few days we spent in the Bronx putting together a video for the Bronx River Alliance. It was symbolic of how many treasures there are in a place that is notorious only for it's severe problems. What I loved was this teenager's unabashed interest in nature. In a place that I'm sure demands some toughness to get along, his gentleness reflected that of the river... an oasis in a busy borough. He reminded me that there are beautiful things everywhere. Especially in the Bronx.

Enjoy this video and get out to the Bronx River some time!

Building Futures- When I Walk

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:22:00 +0000

It is the deep beauty and privilege of childhood to be able to smile in a difficult place.

That's what I learned on one hot day walking along a winding dirt path towards the hillside school yard of Mbaka Oromo Primary. Ahead of us, two girls walked. Bare feet. Torn sweaters. No books. Giant smiles. As they continued their dawdling dance towards school I realized that this is the side of Africa we never get to see. This is the image that should move us all to contribute to a better life for Kenyan kids.

In many ways Western Kenya is a difficult place.... one of limited opportunity, poor health care, fragile ethnic tensions and even food insecurity. But as these kids made their way to school, I believe they were thinking about what all kids think about on their way to school.... pushing each other in the mud.

It's our great pleasure to present the first fruit of our trip to Kenya.

We hope this video will share with you the tremendous enthusiasm these children have for learning and the boundless love they show for their world, however torn. Hats off to Building Futures for the work they do to make sure that these kids are walk towards something... a solidly built school and a solidly built future.

Back Home- Slow lessons from the students of AFS

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 11:57:00 +0000

I was riding my bike the other night and it hit me. I’m back in Brooklyn.

This wasn’t a revelation. We’ve been back from our African adventure for over a month. It wasn’t that I suddenly “woke up” riding my bike in Brooklyn. To the contrary…. it was this sinking feeling at how quickly our adventure had been covered up by the waves our daily life back here in America. I was back on my bike… going back to my apartment after a long day, back to my kitchen, back to my dinner.

I think we are all hitchhikers who just like to play house. We are made of whatever we have eaten for breakfast…. Whatever color and nationality the dirt is under our fingernails from the day’s travel. We like to think that we inhabit every moment but the truth is that every moment and experience inhabits us (and then moves on).

In some ways it has been disheartening to Erin and I that we can’t keep the sights and sounds of our remarkable travels in our brains and on the tips of our tounges… but we cannot. I can tell the rest of this year will be spent carefully crafting videos for our various project with not only the goal of telling these important stories, but also with an eye towards meditating on the people we met, the problems we saw and the occasional small moment that made us feel like there truly is a world worth doing anything we can to improve.

But as I’ve said… life moves on (whether you want it to or not!) and so does our work. This month, while I’m already lamenting the quick fade of my Kiswahili skills, we had the pleasure of working with one of our favorite clients AFS, one of the oldest international exchange organizations in the world.

We shot two videos for AFS, interviewing exchange students at the end of their 10 month high school exchanges and to my surprise the answer to my malaise came from the mouths of these impressive young people.

Half way through one interview, a student who spent a year in Ghana was struggling to define her difficult experience. As she stumbled I saw familiar look in her eyes, the look of all people who see things so different and wonderful that the right words can’t be found. But then struggled on to beautifully about the magic of bonding with her host brothers, of eating with her hands, of learning to play the drum, of traveling the country.

Still more impressive were the exchange students from abroad who descended on Washington DC to meet officials at the State Department. During a Q&A session, we heard some of the bravest, most intelligent questions from these kids (all from countries with large Muslim populations). It moved me to hear the collective voice of those kids in that room. It made me proud to live in a country that makes itself open to such questions and proud to work for such an organization that teaches kids they have the right to ask them.

What we learned from the students of AFS is that it takes a lifetime to absorb the lessons of traveling abroad. It takes patience and creativity to tell these stories. From Good Eye Video we can promise the full force of our talents and the commitment of our hearts to try to share a piece of the gifts we were given by people in little villages and in sprawling slums. Of simple words and food and sights that really have changed us… even though we don’t know it (yet).

Is it good or is it bad?

noreply@blogger.com (Dan) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:34:00 +0000

Joseph turned to me and smiled. “So life in the US…. is it good or is it bad?” We were moving along the ridge of a mountain from Narok to Nairobi, the view of the Rift valley in all its vastness spilled out before us. This question from our driver friend took me a moment to process. In some ways most of our experiences have been in the pursuit of understanding what life here in Kenya really consists of. It wasn’t until Joseph’s question that I realized that our time in Kenya may turn out to be more of a mirror to our own way of life than it is an investigation of someone else’s.

When we create a video for a non-profit there is always a clear temptation to use binarys… these people suffer, these people triumph…. this is a problem and here is the solution. In Kenya I’ve found myself searching in the same way. Is this a country of farmers, plagued by HIV, poor governance, tribal conflict and broken infrastructure? Or is it a country of people who work from dawn to dusk. Who have learned how to expertly use their fertile soil. Who have put their children’s education above almost all else. Who create instant businesses on blankets by the side of the road. Who love to dance and sing and smile. A people who, even if they are literally destitute, will insist you take tea with them.

I’ve had trouble figuring out whether life here is good or bad and of course that’s because there is no such answer. Kenya is all of these things. As visitors (not to mention storytellers) it has to be our job to consider it all … the good and the bad.

In our American minds there are immediate aspects of life in Kenya that conflict with our sense of “a good life”. The roads here make the potholes of Brooklyn feel like the Autobahn. Female Genital Mutilation is still practiced. Bride Inheritance. Ethnic Violence. Medical care is a luxury item, which puts our entire recent medical debate into perspective. Mostly the opportunity to succeed and improve ones standard of living does not compare. In Kenya with a good mind, a strong immune system and a good education you can still find yourself unable to succeed. I guarantee there are a few Nobel, Pulitzer, Oscar winners hoeing beans right now in the fields of Kenya. This is life without a safety net (you’re lucky if you have a big strong family). This is life without the helping hand of the government. The crippling corruption here is unimaginable to us.

On the other side there are so many aspects of life here which I think any visitor is enchanted by. We have been welcomed here in a way that seems impossible in America. One day a woman (who spoke little English) walked us almost a mile before we realized she was going the other way. She simply wanted to make sure these visitors in her community found their way.

Kenyans use what they have, they conserve, they recycle. They are connected to the land (almost everyone here has picked corn and milked a cow in their life). In my own American life, I’ve only dreamed of being this connected to the natural world. It makes all of the local, organic farming we do seem ridiculously backwards.

Keynan kids are hungry for education in a way that mothers across America would die for. School here can easily last 8 hours a day, 6 days a week.

See… as I think about life in Kenya my thoughts inevitably return to my own country, my own way of life. Have I taken for granted the stability of life that our rich economy and (by comparison) honest government has afforded? (Yes.) In fact, I’d like to invite small government-right wing Americans to take a trip here. This country is begging for more government… more schools, decent roads, clean water, medical care. A safety net. We consider all of these things as constants and we should not.

But don’t I want to actually LIVE on land? To know where my food comes from. To greet every visitor as though they were my long lost best friend. Don’t I want to be hungry for knowledge and treat the opportunity to grow as golden?

Kenya has taught us that engaging in “International Aid” can often turn into an exercise in superiority. “Look at these poor people and all the things we could do for them to fix their mixed up backwards country” But the truth is life here is filled with everything. A Mama dies from AIDS leaving five children orphans. A primary school choir sings a triumphant piece of Beethoven (without reading a note of music). Half of the students eat only once a day… a meal of corn flour. The same kids take turns jumping over a river, laughing the whole time.

Kenya has taught us that the American allergy to walking isn’t just making us fatter, but probably diminishing our inner life by 35%. It has taught us that we are obsessively clean. Obsessively afraid of being late. It has taught us that we have so conquered the quest for food, shelter and fire that we have often become bored (think of dog pedicures, everything in Brookstone, hot dog eating contests)

My answer to Joseph was pretty lame. How can you compare life in our country to life in this one? I had more money in my wallet than he would earn in a month. But the breathtaking view out my window… into the land of the Maasai… well, I’ll never have that. We’ll leave Kenya understanding the reason why half the world is clamoring to know our way of life. And why we, Americans, should be clamoring to know theirs.

HandCrafting Justice

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:11:00 +0000

I write to you from the comfort of Jomo Kenyatta International airport. We have about an hour left on Kenyan soil and we are contemplating not only our journey, but return to daily life back in Brooklyn.

The contrast to the glittering duty free and pricey food court is even sharper after the day, perhaps one of the most eye opening we've had here in Kenya.

Here in Nairobi we are doing work for a fantastic organization called HandCrafting Justice, which empowers women all over the world to earn a living with hand crafts. As host of the most excellent Sisters of the Good Sheperd here in Nairobi, we met the women from the slums of who create everything from baskets, to dresses, to greeting cards. After a long day of shooting hands nimbly moving across fabric, paper and thread, one of the group of mamas (who make beautiful woven baskets) marched up and announced that all would like us to visit there homes in Makuru Slum.

What do you say to that? Yes, mama... How is nine am?

So we spent our day in the slum... A maze of one room shanties that stretches for miles.. Rivers of sewage winding between and garbage covers many of the main paths.

The awful parts of slum life are well known and I won't elaborate on them here. Instead I want to tell you about our Journey. Each home we visited welcomed us. Each mama told us what they did to keep food on the table.. One sold nuts. One sold charcoal... One sold fruits. As we went to the next house the other mamas would follow until we had an entourage of rowdy, colorful older women helping us cut our way across the slum. Each stop involved cramming another person into the small one room homes.

Sitting here in the airport the thing that amazes me the most about the slum is the tremendous volume of hard work and vitality we found there today. Tens of thousands of small business occupy every crevice of the neighborhood. People sell fruit, cut hair, roast meat, grind corn. There was a movie theater (a small tv you pay a few shillings to crowd around and watch the world cup on).

This a place where people, despite popular imagination, are struggling to live... not waiting to die. The women we met feed a family of five for less than three dollars a day and they do it with their hands and backs and minds.

In the same way we found HandCrafting Justice a hugely intelligent idea in this context. They are helping these women do what they want to do. Kazi Kazi (Work work!) We are proud to be bringing home images of these women using their hands to not only make beautiful things, but to improve their businesses.

And guess what they asked us for. Not money. Not food. Not our shoes or camera.

Market. Customers.

I couldn't believe it. But over and over we heard these women praying we help them make their hand crafts a success. Sitting there in the slums (as I sit now in the airport) I'm heartened that suffering's companion seems to be the enduring will, talents and potential of the poor to work. For them to make and do things. For them to still invent (and monetize) everything from water to toilets. I believe we owe it to poor people everywhere to respect and learn from their already vast experiences in survival. Only then can we help them thrive.

Wheels almost up. Thanks Kenya...

Kwaheri Kenya, Habari Tanzania

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:09:00 +0000

For our next adventure, we headed out on the open road... to Tanzania! The Olevolos Project, which is located just outside of Arusha, is a non-profit that supports orphans and families in the Olevolos community of Tanzania. This may sound like a simple goal, but sleeping, eating and working on their site for 4 days gave us a profound respect for not only the passion and commitment of everyone involved, but the lengths they go to in order to accomplish it.

Throughout our work with non-profits and video, we do a lot of “sizing up”. What is an organization really about? What social problems do they solve? Who is their target audience? How can we best convey their mission and values through video? The Olevolos Project is new territory for us, because they are no typical 501(c)3 and consequently, the answers to these questions are multi-faceted. They have taken a very specific problem (increasing numbers of orphans in the Olevolos village, due to HIV/AIDS) and have investigated the best ways to tackle this problem from many different fronts. That has led to the creation of a number of different programs to address this issue:

- A nursery school

- Adolescent Girl’s initiative

- Secondary School Tutoring Program

- Sustainable Livestock and Agriculture Program

- Widow Micro-Saving Group

- Sports & Recreation Program

The beauty I’ve found in a program like this is that it approaches a massive problem from such a holistic point of view. When one or both parents pass away, due to HIV or any number of problems, it affects children, wives, husbands, families, and communities at large. Dory (the Director) and James (the on-site Director) go to unbelievable lengths to involve the entire community: the village chief, the village elders, children from surrounding areas and parents. The Widow’s group prepared and served a community meal on the site grounds one day, and one neighbor was kind enough to donate some open space to allow three simultaneous (and unbelievably competitive!) soccer games to take place for the sports & recreation program. In work like this, the only hope of creating a sustainable environment for kids and their families is to get the community involved, excited and invested in its success.

I just want to quickly share the story and photograph of one family we met. Kadada (with the tie-dyed shirt), her younger sister Abigaeli and her older brothers Bakari and Kababu are kids who, on paper, would have every excuse to frown... and yet quite literally light up the room with their smiles. We don't need to look any farther to find an amazing reason to support and chamption The Olevolos Project in all of its efforts. Thanks to Dory and James for letting us share a few days with these wonderful families!

How do you take your tea?

noreply@blogger.com (Erin) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:19:00 +0000

As a tea lover in a country ruled by coffee lovers, it was a fun and refreshing visit to Kericho, the jewel city of Kenya's tea growing region. Our project was creating a video about sustainable tea growing as promoted and certified by the Rainforest Alliance.

In Africa if you don't have oil, diamonds or giraffes, the word "exports" doesn't inspire bragging. No wonder the Kenyan tea factory managers we met with were unusually proud of their thriving tea industry, the country's leading export and third largest source of revenue.

The Rainforest Alliance works with Kenyan Tea factories and farmers (as it does elsewhere around the world) to make sure the production of tea is done in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. And I think it's working.

In Kenya, small scale tea farms provide a livelihood for thousands of people. Many of the farmers have formed successful co-operatives to process and sell their green-leaf (freshly picked tea). We got to visit a tea factory where the leaf is transformed into some of the best tea in the world.

Factories are cool to shoot. Ask anyone. It was extra cool to see a factory entirely owned by a collective of small farmers. But it was the trip into the hills to meet these farmers that was really special. We approached one woman of seventy as she nimbly moved through leaves of gorgeous green tea bush. During our interview she told us about her life as a tea farmer, her pride in being a shareholder in the factory and her innate desire to sustain the environment.

As we thanked her, she held onto my hand and blessed me. After all the cups of tea consumed from this woman's blood and sweat, no one had hiked up to ask her a few basic questions about how the tea is actually made. It affirmed our belief that there is no one better to tell the story than those being served. Despite the language barrier, we hope this video can be focused on the image of this woman, the spirit of her words and the knowledge that someone like her picks many leaves for every sip we take.

Today these small farmers comprise most of the tea activity in Kenya. The multi-nationals are quickly challenging that (and a way of life). We hope that the Rainforest Alliance certification these small farmers get will help them stay competitive and most importantly sustain their land and ecosystem for the next generation. As we watched Rainforest Alliance work in the field, it was amazing to realize that they are actually making environmental change possible, not through lobbying or advocacy, but through grass-roots, farmer by farmer training. They plug into the community and seem to create a real common sense, bottom up program for creating a better place for cows, trees and tea bushes. Certifications can often be lip service, but as far as we're concerned the next box of tea we drink will be RA certified.