The Need

All God’s Children International holds large events once or twice a year as a way to raise awareness and to raise funds for various international projects. For six months the marketing team was preparing for an event to be held in early February, 2020. The focus of the event was to be on AGCI’s work in Ethiopia, which is solely sponsorship since international adoption is no longer possible there. However, after working for months to try and secure travel visas for two of our Ethiopian sponsorship recipients, it was unclear whether either of them would be able to travel to the US. AGCI was potentially left without a keynote speaker who could speak in person about the transformation they experienced as a result of AGCI’s sponsors.

I was already scheduled to go to Ethiopia in November of 2019, so I prepared – as a backup plan – to spend a few hours interviewing one of the subjects regarding the life-change she experienced as a result of AGCI’s education sponsorship. Not long after returning to the States, I learned that it would not be possible to fly anyone from Ethiopia, and that we would try and find a speaker based in the US. We connected with a former-adoptee who agreed to speak at the event, but I was left with the enormous task of bridging her story of adoption – no longer possible in Ethiopia – with the story of the woman I interviewed in Ethiopia. Film was the key to connecting those two worlds, and the resulting film led to a record-breaking event for AGCI.

the results

I was able to successfully bridge a story of sponsorship with a story of adoption in a way that helped the audience truly understand the need in Ethiopia and how they could partner with AGCI to help. This film did much of the heavy lifting in terms of messaging for the event, and there was a record level of engagement and giving as a result.

SOAR - Genet & Hope

A film was needed to successfully bridge two separate worlds of work in Ethiopia.