As Children International’s audiovisual technician, Jacob spends his time seizing the moment…and sharing it with thousands of sponsors.
Jacob joined CI over nine years ago; since then, he’s produced between two and three hundred videos. If you’ve ever visited our homepage, www.children.org, and watched a video in our feature window or browsed the videos in our archive, you’ve seen Jacob’s handiwork.
Jacob is one b-a-a-a-a-a-d dude with a video camera!
Like the rest of us who work here, Jacob feels Children International is no ordinary job. As he commented to me just yesterday, “Seriously…the atmosphere is wonderful here. The people, they’re great! CI is just an awesome place to work.”
Although Jacob is right – CI is a fun place to work – his travels have also taken him to places where the grim realities of life are starkly evident. He’s visited Honduras, Mexico, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic…but it was a community in the latter called La Mosca (“The Fly”) that made the greatest impact on him.
“It’s actually a garbage dump in the Dominican Republic. Talk about a horrible place….And people really work there (or should I say scrounge) to make a living. I had watched video from other trips, but even that didn’t prepare me for the smells and slop we’d have to walk through. Visiting this place really made me appreciative of what I have,” reflects Jacob. (Check out the video Jacob shot by visiting our video archive and selecting Life in the Dump.)
By helping bring to life the stories of the children and families we help around the world, Jacob plays a vital role in helping raise awareness and encourage people to get involved.
“Our writers do a great job of writing the scripts and I really enjoy putting the visuals to their thoughts,” shares Jacob. “I hope our viewers enjoy watching them. Write and let me know what you think of our videos. You might even give us a suggestion of a video or two that you would like to see. I can’t guarantee it will be produced, but your ideas would be great.”
Have some ideas for Jacob? Send them to blog@children.org.
2 comments:
Thank you Jacob for doing what you do, and giving us all a visual picture of a world and people we are trying to help. It is truly inspirational.
you asked for ideas, and one idea (maybe not great, but an idea anyway) is to do a series of videos, like.. a day in the life.. and choose different CI people that could range from field doctors/dentists, food program volunteers, volunteers who notify kids they have been sponsored, gift distribution days, etc.. and follow them around for a day, showing exactly what they go through to provide the services we support through sponsorship. by focusing on one person at a time it becomes personal, and helps us relate to exactly what someone does when we send a special donation, or choose to sponsor another child, etc... just a thought.. and again, thank you for what you do.
I think Dana's idea is great. Although we get to know our sponsored children thru letters and photographs...unless we visit a field office, we get only a glimpse of the talented andn special people who make it all happen. When I visited the Philippines last year, the field staff went out of their way to help me meet with sponsored kids. In fact one staff person apologized after a long day of visits for not being able to go with me on the 2nd day of my visit to sponsored kids as he was planning to get married that day.
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