Description:
World Hope International is a faith based relief and development organization alleviating suffering and injustice through education, enterprise and community health in over 30 countries. Their microfinance work in West Africa has over 15,000 clients. We wanted to show the amazing impact these small business loans have on the working poor. It was important to both show the breadth and depth of these programs. One goal of the video was to show the similarities of these entrepreneurs to American business people.

Obstacles:
Traveling to West Africa and dealing with some cultural differences is always an added tension. Our script was composed in part before we shot the video, however, there was a lot of on-sight adjustments needed based on who we interviewed.

Solutions:
As always, flexibility is a key to working cross-culturally. We adjusted our expectations as we found the unique stories from the different clients. In order to handle noise and lighting issues, we did much of our interviews outside and took advantage of the sunlight and colorful backgrounds in the community.

Favorite Element:
“I’m a baker. I make bread.” This has to be my favorite quote of all time…and each time I watch people watch this video, they smile at this comment by one of the microfinance clients. I also like the war images we created from the barbed wire around a UN tank with some over-layed images of bullet-riddled poles and angry faces and crowds. Shooting the tank was quite the experience. I wound up surrounded by ten Nigerian UN soldiers who wanted to take away my camera and destroy the video tape. Somehow I talked my way out of it. In the future, I’ll make sure I ask permission first!