November 19, 2021

It all started when…

Two months ago I was approached on social media by Danielle, a marine soldier in her mid to late thirties stationed in Syria. After a few days of back and forth conversation, I began to suspect that she wasn’t the person I initially thought she was. Instead of ending the conversation there, I called the person out on the deception and asked her if she would consider continuing the conversation anyway. It turns out, after we were able to break through this wall of suspicion and distrust, the woman revealed herself to actually be a young man, 19 years of age, who lived in a remote village in Nigeria along with his two other brothers. He would later tell me that he was begrudgingly doing this ‘romance’ scam in order to barely scrape enough money for himself and his brothers for food and rent. It was either that or doing back breaking work on a dangerous construction site where many would not even get paid and risk life and limb for a mere pittance.

Once we were able to mutually reach a comfortable level of trust, we were able to share with each other things about our own lives in our separate ends of the world. In spite of all of the obvious differences that make us seemingly worlds apart, like our age, our culture, our life experiences, and even our language, we had one thing in common, a desire to understand and learn from one another.

Nigeria has experienced many of the same things that natives in the US have experienced. Due to hundreds of years of exploitation by European colonists and multi-national oil companies, their connection to their ancestral traditions and language have practically been severed by the their own government through social policies, to eradicate and purge all that was ethnically indigenous in nature, including language, culture and traditions.

Today, he and I are working together, along with his two brothers and friends, to help build a curriculum that will enable them to develop their own skill sets to become successful writers and film-makers. For about 6 weeks now, in spite of the very costly, restrictive and inadequate access to WiFi technology, I’ve been able show them the basic mechanics of how to create an engaging short film, through understanding the language of visual composition and how to use the camera portion of their mobile devices. Through the kindness of some individuals here in Austin, who have generously contributed their own mobile devices to this cause, I was able to send two working iPhones to Nigeria to be used as production cameras, so that the students there can develop a short film as part of their online training.

Right now, all three brothers, who call themselves The Dream Chasers are developing their first written split-page script for a 3-minute music video for a song they recorded themselves, entitled Fight Us © (listen below). We are currently in the pre-production phase of the project. See what else we are doing to empower our communities all over the world. Check out this LINK to find out how you can get involved.