Exploring Career options Overseas

While our film crew (12 students and me) were in Nairobi, we took a few hours out of our day to meet with Andy Brown of OFM—On-Field Media.

OFM is ministry of Africa Inland Mission, an organization with hundreds of missionaries scattered across Africa, doing evangelism, leadership training, Muslim outreach and so much more.

OFM exists to help tell stories of what God is doing through AIM missionaries across Africa. A lot of missionaries—gifted as they are—struggle when it comes time to go home and raise support, to tell their stories, to generate interest, prayers and giving. OFM does a superb job of helping them make professional videos, print pieces, webisodes and more. Our team spent a few hours with Andy, learning the history of OFM (it’s not a very long history), learning what they do and how they do it, and what the opportunities are (there’s a lot of opportunities!).

One of the exciting ideas that came out of our time together is a way to be mutually beneficial to each other. OFM needs interns. Dordt’s Digital Media major needs great places to send interns. The more we talked, the more excited we all got about summer interns from Dordt living and working in Nairobi, and even pursuing a semester abroad—working with OFM.

We’ll see where it all goes, but in the meantime, the thirteen of us had our horizons expanded and students have yet another career option to consider.

Into Africa

On December 29, 13 of us will travel to Nairobi, Kenya for our third, and final shoot in slums for the slum documentary film we're working on.

We have already tracked individuals living in slums in Asia and Latin America. The final piece of the puzzle lies in Africa.

I used to live in Kenya, so have a lot of contacts there. We'll be working closely with Pastor Shadrack Ogembo, Pastor Daniel Ogutu, and a new friend, Father Ted Hochstatter.

Ogutu and Ogembo have been friends of mine since 1985 when I first went to live in Kenya after my Jr. year in college. We'll be doing pro-bono work for all three of these men, like we did in Manila. Plus we'll be shooting stories for the slum documentary.

Pastor Daniel is my main contact for finding just the right family for the documentary. He has already sent me some pictures--the ones you see in this blog--of people he feels will help us capture the story of the one billion people living in slums.

So far, they are just faces in a picture. No personalities, no names, no family histories. The beauty of this project is taking anonymous folks like this, taking jpgs, and having the privilege of discovering who they really are. And helping our viewers discover that too.

For the last few months, our team of 13 has been through quite a bit together. We've done fund raisers, students have written letters asking for support, and we've planned things out. Now the funds are in and sufficient to make this trip happen. We're excited to create publicity materials for three different groups working among the poor in Nairobi, as well as get the material we need to create this documentary.

Please keep an eye on this space over the next few weeks as I'll be putting stories here of what we discover, who we discover, and what we learn about what I'm starting to refer to as "The Fourth World," the world of slums.