We love working with the local school to develop interesting and challenging film projects. We were asked to create a 1 day film workshop using the school’s theme of Africa. We would be given a random group of 14 kids 3rd-8th grades. As part of the school’s theme they had made connections with two schools in Africa– one in Rwanda for genocide survivors and another in Lesotho for Aids orphans. All year the kids had been sending letters, raising money and having assemblies learning about their pen pals in Africa. We thought it would be kind of amazing if we could make a video letter to send to these villages in Africa. Which we did– using 2 HD cameras and a DSLR for stop-motion. We divided the kids into groups and started filming all the things they love to do– climbing trees, doing cartwheels, playing foursquare, reading books and descriptions of the town. We stayed up all night editing it. Sold DVD copies– raising over $500 to send to Lesotho.
But the most exciting part of the project was arranging to have the kids in Africa watch it. Our contact in Lesotho, a nurse from our town, took the film on her laptop and showed the kids in small groups. In Rwanda, we were able to coordinate with the local Red Cross office to string hundreds of feet of extension cord to plug in the district managers DVD player–over 1,000 kids watched the film in cinder block classrooms.
