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Here is a twenty minute interview with mural artist Leah Samuelson from last Spring’s BuildaBridge Institute. We spoke about her teaching methodology and how she approaches a community about the process of mural making. Her work has brought her to ‘visionaries, personnel of biblical training institutions, schools, correctional facilities, slums, and palaces.’
BIRDS India from Jason Nicholas on Vimeo.
Dr. Katherine Welch from Jason Nicholas on Vimeo.
I’ve subscribed to Vimeo so I can showcase my work. I’m experimenting with stills and audio to make vignettes of people I meet or work with; the video above on Katherine and her work is a tentative exploration (I’m producing these in Apple Aperture).
Women at a BIRDS community immunisation clinic
Katherine and I visited the Bharti Integrated Rural Development Society about six hours by car outside Hyderabad (unlike much of India, there is no train service) in rural Andhra Pradesh. BIRDS addresses a host of needs in the area from health to water management to micro-finance loans.
I interviewed Paul Raja Rao, the director of BIRDS, one night on the veranda of their organic farm (they are attempting to re-introduce organic agriculture into an area mostly given over to chemical based farming).
Here is a rough cut of my interview with Dr. Katherine Welch who I was travelling with in India (this is a 26 minute long-form cut of what will become 10 minute piece). She speaks concerning her work internationally on the health needs of trafficked or prostituted women and their children.
See more about Katherine’s organisation Global Health Promise
After a couple years; International Ministries has finally posted some video from my trips to the DRC and Albania. I did most of the videotaping of this material. Francisco Litardo did all the editing and post-production (he is the narrator and, I’m assuming, chose the swanky hep muzak as well).
First, an overview of their work in Albania:
Then, Into the Heart of Darkness:
And Wayne (note that the video rather sounds like Wayne and Katherine are siblings that later married and came back to Congo as missionaries; don’t fear, they grew up in Congo as the offspring of two distinct sets of parents).
And, this is the kind of thing that makes me bust out crying behind the camera…
I’ll not post them all here; you can go to the God at Work page on the International Ministries website to see more. There are selections from all over the world showing what IM missionaries are up to. One thing I especially respect about them is that they are looking at the real physical needs of people instead of just dropping Bibles from 10,000 feet. The IM missionaries I’ve worked with are seriously dedicated people who are right there on the front lines with people in palpable need. Even if you don’t share the same religious ideology or fervour, it’s the commitment these people have to making real change in the here and now of people’s lives that commands respect.
We spend all this time and effort to get the highest quality video possible; I obsess over all the technical details—and the final product gets compressed down and shown on YouTube. Alas.
Interview with Dr. Nancy Good Sider from Eastern Mennonite University on her work in conflict resolution and trauma healing.
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