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Compelling Storytelling for Not For Profits

One of the main challenges not-for-profit organisations face is raising awareness and support for their causes and missions. They often have limited resources and time to reach out to potential donors, volunteers, partners and beneficiaries. How can they tell their stories in a way that engages and inspires people to take action?There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, but some general principles and best practices can help not-for-profit organisations craft and share their stories...

The Power Of The Smartphone

Smartphone cameras have revolutionised how people can share their stories with the world. They are affordable, accessible, and easy to use, allowing anyone to capture and edit high-quality photos and videos with their mobile devices. For the impoverished, poor, isolated, imprisoned or marginalised, smartphone cameras offer a powerful tool to document their realities, express their emotions, and raise awareness about their struggles. They can also use smartphone cameras to learn from others, conn...

Finalist - Community Good Award

We were honoured to have been nominated and selected as a finalist at the 2021 Rocketspark Community Good Awards. You can read about our journey to the awards via the article on the awards website.A big thanks to Rocketspark and to all those people and businesses who nominated us.While we didn't win, we were humbled by the fact that you thought we we worthy of been nominated....

storytelling 2.0

Stories constantly vie for our attention. We put ourselves in their path every time we sit down at a computer or pick up our phones. These stories appeal to absolutely everyone—the ones who like to read, the ones who surf YouTube like it’s a sport, the ones who listen to podcasts on their commute. Is it any wonder that there’s a premium on developing concepts and producing and packaging content? It’s incredible to think how quickly we got here. As recently as the 1990s, no one could ...

unleash your assets

Have you ever tried to find something important—a receipt, or a business card, or a note scribbled on a scrap of paper—in amongst a stack of other stuff? When was the last time you discovered something important in the depths of a catch-all drawer, and wish you could get back the hour you once spent searching for it? One of the advantages of the digital world is that we have all the tools we need to find everything we need instantly. Finite spaces and physical clutter are no longer e...

enhancing the story through image

We all know that “a picture is worth a thousand words”; this maxim defines the essence of contemporary storytelling. Now, more than ever, the use of images in storytelling is crucial for both the audience and the storyteller. Here are three of the key ways that images enhance your story: 1. Images grab our attention. Technology now lets us tell our stories through a variety of mediums to diverse audiences. As storytellers, we face the challenge of grabbing the attention of people who are di...

innocent

Imagine fleeing in the dark of night with six children in a little boat; only three of them make it across the Nile. More than one million innocent victims have been forced from their homes because of fighting in South Sudan. Despite the tragedy, their hearts beat with new hope.Source: Samaritan's Purse...

the little person inside

The truly inspiring story of Talan Skeels Piggins. A testament to the inner courage and strength of the human soul. Talan was paralysed in 2003 when a car side-swiped him and he ploughed his motorbike head-on into traffic. He was told he had just a 30 percent chance of survival and would never walk again if he lived. Today he continues to strap himself to a motorbike and take on able bodied competitors at one of the most dangerous sports on the planet.Source: Speechless Films...

109 and Smiling

Meet Richard Overton, America's oldest veteran. In this lively short film by Matt Cooper and Rocky Conly, hear the whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking supercentenarian reveal his secrets to a long life....

sonja

Sonja is a poetic portrayal of the story of the sightless artist Sona Zeliskova, who despite adverse fate found her life journey in art and ceramicsThe film experiments with audio-visual components to recount Sona's unique story. Combining a documentary, narrative and poetic approach, this short film attempts to depict the real-life story via poetic language.Sona carries a one-of-a-kind story of a lifetime struggle, overcoming obstacles while flourishing her love for art. At the age of 13, she w...

waves for change

Surf therapy combines the therapeutic elements of the ocean with the adventure of surfing to impact the physical and mental well being of individuals. Mental health is an area often not supported enough, especially with children. Waves For Change helps take vulnerable and lesser privileged children from under resourced communities into the ocean through the medium of surf therapy. With the guidance and support from the mentors and the power of mother nature, the children learn how to cope with s...

beautifully savage

In the United States, about two thirds of released prisoners are rearrested within three years. Joe was determined to never go back. This is Joe's story of pugilism, prison, and perseverance in his hometown of Fort Collins, Colorado.SOURCE: Breakwater Studios...

the doomsday vault

Imagine that the unthinkable has happened.A massive asteroid impact triggers a “nuclear winter” effect, or one of the world’s most dangerous supervolcanos erupts. Maybe Donald Trump gets in an epic Twitter feud with Kim Jong-Un that initiates World War 3.Either way, things are going sideways, and the fate of human civilization itself is at stake. Will everything be lost?ENTER THE ‘DOOMSDAY VAULT’ Well, besides the fact that the world’s cities have been replaced by smoking craters, th...

dreams of myanmar

Myanmar. A country that has been sleeping for a long time wakes up. With cameras in hand we try to capture the unique culture and stunning nature of this beautiful country before it changes irreversibly. On one hand exploring Myanmar feels like stumbling into a living edition of the National Geographic: elephants leading processions of novice monks through dusty towns, a fruit seller carrying a basket of mangoes on her head: a fulfilment of the oriental fantasies of the West. On the other- a cou...

a photography challenge

The annual Dogwood 52 Week Photography Challenge has been an amazing success, with tens of thousands of photographers  participating from around the world. Join us in 2019 for year 4 of the challenge!Story Telling: Good photographers can take beautiful images of something. Great photographers can tell a story with an image. In this category you will take a prompt and turn it into a photographic story.Compositional Eye:  In past challenges we have explored the rules of composition....

outside the lines

The right to citizenship at birth, ‘ius soli’, is still unapproved in Italy, denying over a million children, born of immigrant parents, automatic citizenship. The film captures the story of an Italian basketball team, who were refused access to regional leagues because of the Italian born players’ immigration status. Former Italian basketball champion, Massimo Antonelli, started the team at a disused holiday complex in Castel Volturno, an area that is made up of 25,000 inhabitants, a fift...

the camera collector

Interested in photography since 1960, he still talks about his passion with emotion.Photographer and collector of cameras, manuals, books and vintage magazines, passionately he tells many anecdotes about precious items collected in over 50 years of career.You won’t know his name, but you will like his story. SOURCE: Andrea Casanov...

reinventing the toilet

Eleonore Rartjarasoaniony – a 47-year-old mother, daughter and small-shop owner in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo – stands in the middle of her yard, watching two young men in colourful overalls and rubber boots service her new waterless Loowatt toilet, which replaced her pit latrine a few months ago. At her feet, two lean, long-legged chickens, flocked by a bunch of fluffy chicks, peck at anything remotely resembling food, including my shoes.Inside a wooden shack behind her, Rartjaraso...

beating poverty...

Nigeria recently surpassed India to become the country with the highest number of people living in extreme poverty: 87 million. Nigeria is oil rich and boasts Africa’s fastest growing economy. Yet six of its people fall into extreme poverty every minute. This story isn’t unique to Nigeria. It’s echoed in other resource-rich countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola where an exploitative elite and multinational companies keep wealth from reaching th...

changing the world

Nearly 70 years ago, in December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At this time, the UN’s cultural arm, UNESCO, sought to harness the “universal language” of photography to communicate the new system of human rights globally, across barriers of race and language.UNESCO curated the ground-breaking “Human Rights Exhibition” in 1949, seeking to create a sense of a universal humanity through photographs. It sent p...

hands we can't see

Every day we take for granted the little luxuries that our global economy offers us.  We drink our coffee.  We start our day.  All the while, hidden from our view is the enormity of human effort, labor, and heart that has gone in to providing us that luxury.   This separation from the labors and efforts of people just like us, prevents us from thinking about the choices we make as consumers. It prevents us from thinking critically about the important ways our choices aff...

my stolen childhood

Thousands of women across West Africa have been enslaved by a centuries old practice called “trokosi”. Girls are forced to live and work with priests in religious shrines, for the rest of their lives, to “pay” for the sins of family members. Although the practice has officially been banned in Ghana, it’s still happening there and in other parts of West Africa but on a smaller scale. Twenty years after she was freed from this practice, Brigitte Sossou Perenyi goes on a journey to...

shoot your first video

Creating Incredible, Memorable Videos is Our Super Power! Who was your favourite superhero growing up? Batman? Superman? Green Lantern? Point being, we all had a favourite superhero. Why? It was somebody to look up to. Somebody to aspire to be. As we get older, superheroes are less important to us. We become overworked and overwhelmed with bills and obligations. Time becomes a more valuable commodity than we ever thought and superheroes take a back seat in fantasy land as the real world became t...

smartphone photography

Ready to level-up your photo game? Learn 7 easy tips that will help take better photos with a smartphone or DSLR! Think Media and Chelsea Nicole Photography do a quick help video.SOURCE: Think Media...

All Together, Life is Beautiful

All Together, Life is Beautiful" is the leading visual for the 2018 Life is Beautiful Music Festival."In celebration of the true meaning of All Together, Life is Beautiful is a rallying cry for positivity, unity and creativity in our community. It is an initiative to bring people together and spark conversations that inspire and empower the values of enduring happiness." “All Together” is written and performed by National Poetry Slam champion and multiplatinum songwriter IN-Q, who encourages...