Tag: charity
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Barefoot in the Malagasy Jungle: the Making of Onja’s Crowdfunding Video (part 3)
In the third and and final installment in this series I have written about a trip we took out to a remote village in Madagascar, to help film a crowdfunding video for a great cause, Onja. In this post I share (with the help of Anne’s photos) our impressions of life in the 700-person village…
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Barefoot in the Malagasy Jungle: the Making of Onja’s Crowdfunding Video (part 1)
It started back in July when I got an interesting item in my “Google Alerts” for Madagascar. A small NGO was looking for a filmmaker and a social media manager to support their project in eastern Madagascar. I quickly fired off an email doing my best to convince “Sam” that this project was tailor-made for…
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Anjezika: Antananarivo’s “Waterworld”
This is Anjezika. Once a vibrant fishing and rice-growing village, it has gradually been encircled and choked off by the surrounding city of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Now, nobody grows anymore rice here. A few small fish can be collected from the stagnant water that separates small squares of low-lying land where the people have built their…
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Children of the Street: Ankorondrano
A group of about a dozen kids gathers on a small patch of green with a few benches and trees. Basically a large roundabout. Imagine an oblong Dupont Circle, except Starbucks is 3,000 miles away. The sound of traffic is constant. Two young volunteers lug a bag of supplies to a cement bench and quietly…
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Love Your Neighbor
Truth be told, we didn’t ask to come to Madagascar just for the lemurs – although they’re a pretty nice bonus. A big reason we came here because we want to try and make a difference, somewhere, in someone’s lives; to have a purpose. But Saturday was a pretty tough day. We started the day…
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Children of the Street: Ampefiloha
Last week I posted about a new project Anne and I are involved in – assisting the NGO “Teach for Madagascar” via a group of street photographers called “Zanaky Ny Lalana” (Children of the Street). This week we went to another of the ten locations where Malagasy volunteers teach children who don’t have access to other…
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Video for a Good Cause
One of the things I’ve had the opportunity to do in Namibia is to make short videos highlighting important causes, or to show far-away donors where their money is going. A little more than half a year ago, my wife told me that she had been to an informal settlement (a “shantytown”, literally) where people…
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Namibia’s “N/a’ankuse” Needs a Filmmaker
The N/a’an ku se charity lodge, wildlife-sanctuary-and-a-whole-bunch-of-other-stuff is looking for a filmmaker. It’s not a high-paying job, but it’s a good cause and a great opportunity to hang out in Namibia and take pictures of cool stuff. The organization occupies a large piece of land just east of Namibia’s capital Windhoek, where a number of…
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Hope of Good Hope gets a Sponsor
It seems that the “Home of Good Hope”, a local soup kitchen that feeds approximately 350 desperately poor children in a local township shantytown, has gotten a Dutch “gemeente” (roughly equivalent to a county) as an official sponsor. TAZM Pictures recently made a promotional video for the Home of Good Hope, and it receives regular…
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Seeking Pledges for Namibia
This November 19, I will be participating in the event, “Namibia Runs for Charity.” From 9 am to 4 pm, I will have the opportunity to run as many laps as possible for Namibian charities. And I could use your help! Now, it would be good to be able to post here exactly WHICH charity…
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Tracks in the Dust: Songs from Afghanistan
It’s said that combat duty consists of long periods of boredom interspersed by brief moments of terror. In Kabul, Afghanistan, it tends to be long, tedious work hours, interspersed with sleep. In this environment, maintaining one’s sanity often leads to skimping a bit on sleep in order to have some “personal time” – whether it’s…
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World Run Day MasterCard Spoof
November 7 was this year’s “World Run Day”. For those who haven’t heard of World Run Day, the organization’s web site states, “It is a day for runners worldwide to join each other, wherever their location, in a celebration of running and charitable giving.” You can sign up, get a T-shirt and a bib number,…