Months in the Making…Team Schools Online Annual Report Launches
Today the online annual report for Team Schools (the Newark branch of KIPP charter schools) launches. We created four videos for the site which tell the stories of students whose lives have been profoundly impacted by TEAM schools. Each of these students’ stories blew me away. Ibraheem has gone from constantly running out of the classroom and refusing to try to read to now reading on grade level and dreaming of college. Mia realized that she is a good learner, gained her confidence back and grew several grade levels in more »
I am brave and I am not a coward.
From across the courtyard I saw ten or so students huddled around in a circle. Curious, I approached them to get a glimpse of what they were looking at and saw them all gravitating towards the small screen on one of the flip cams that they had been shooting with. It was the end of a phenomenal afternoon of creative activism with the members of the West Africa AIDS Foundation Passion Squad (peer educators)- RAAM worked with half the students on creating t-shirt designs and storybooks while Ethan, Branson and more »
Introducing Of Rags Collaboration
I am thrilled to announce our collaboration with Of Rags, a sustainable fashion company co-founded by my good friend Branson Skinner, who is driven by the belief that we need to change the way we think about consumption, so that our purchases work for good and build connections between communities and people. His partner Raam, the head designer for Of Rag, is an artist from Labadi town in Accra, Ghana who was a fashion entrepreneur selling his hand painted shirts before he met Branson. Together, they are building a movement which more »
Meditation 2- Year of the Rabbit
It begins a week in advance– oranges and tangerines go on sale, sidewalk flower shops sprout, and vendors sell 3-D paper animal cut-outs charging tourists 5x as much as locals. Chinese New Year is my favorite time of year to live in Chinatown and this year (our 3rd one here) was our first attempt to capture it on video. The ways that we have documented the new year have evolved as we have as visual artists. It is incredible to look at my images from just two years ago and more »
KoKOFIFI- Live. Love. Outloud.
KoKOFIFI embodies everything about what it means to be a global woman. It is about being unapologetically bold, beautiful, brainy and ambitious. It is about living life to the fullest, soaking up every ray of sunshine, feeling the depths of every breath and saying HALLELUJAH! I AM ALIVE! KoKOFIFI, a global fashion brand is the brainchild of Magogodi Makhene, who constantly makes me think, “How come SHE is willing to be friends with ME????” She is a force of nature who turns heads every time she walks into the room. more »
Announcing Meditations- a series on mood and seasons
We saw him almost immediately after opening our window to film the blizzard outside. A single man, about 30 years old, who looked freezing and confused, not wearing any warm clothing, struggling to cross the street. Ethan began filming him before we realized that he was in bad condition. We were relieved when a group passing him helped him get to the next corner. But after they left and we saw him walk into the middle of the intersection again and fall over, we turned off the camera, grabbed our more »
Anzuma’s Story
In this photo: Nasima, Anzuma’s daughter. Today Anzuma’s story premieres on Courage in the Heart. Anzuma is an incredibly strong mother who has lead her family through a lot in the past few years. Her daughter Nasima got married at 12 and quickly became pregnant. After having her second child, she started acting noticeably different. After a tumultuous waiting period because they did not have money for medical care, they finally learned that Nasima had a brain tumor. Nasima’s husband immediately abandoned her and her two children and Anzuma is more »
Capoeira in Sao Bras, Bahia
I recently spent three weeks in northeast Brazil: experienced Carnaval in Salvador, traveled to my former home in Olinda, PE, and traveled in the interior of Bahia. With Eyespot Films, we made a trip to Santo Amaro and Sao Bras with the hopes of getting to know the capoeira and samba de roda there. There was a stark contrast from what we saw in Salvador. In Santo Amaro, we met Mestre Gato – who takes the same name as his father from whom he first learned Capoeira. After spending two decades more »
Courage in the Heart Launches!
This past summer, I traveled to Bangladesh for nine weeks with Patricia Schneidewind and Ethan Goldwater to document BRAC, the world’s largest development organization’s social justice initiatives. Today, on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day we are launching Courage in the Heart, an online storytelling platform featuring the stories of 12 women who are radically changing the consensus about the value of women by organizing to demand their rights. Visit the site here: www.brac.net/courageintheheart Mussamat struck us with her beauty from the moment we saw her. She greeted us more »
Must a revolution be photographed and filmed to succeed?
“The problem is that most American media compulsively ignore everything south of the Sahara and north of Johannesburg. A demonstration has to be filmed, photographed, streamed live into the offices of foreign leaders to achieve everything Egypt’s achieved.” I came across this article in Al Jazeera a few days ago and it really got me thinking. It proposes that protests across sub-Saharan Africa partly spurred by the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and across the Middle East are not gaining traction because the international media has not paid any attention to them. more »
