By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 30 July 2019)
Amrish Shah,
a fourth generation Kenyan based in London and Sandra Creighton, an Afro-Irish
Canadian based in Toronto both have specialized skills in transmedia. It is
those skills and a children’s shelter in Ngong that brought them to Kenya where
they’re currently designing a multi-media (or transmedia) platform to assist
the home.
Transmedia,
Amrish explains, refers to everything from virtual reality and podcasts to
websites and sound bites for radio, video clips for Vevo, YouTube and cable, and
even the ‘old fashioned’ print media. “Although the print that will be part of
the project,” says Sandra, “will be digitalized and also voiced over by the
children themselves so that all kinds of viewers [and listeners] can access the
information we are creating for the shelter.”
The shelter
Sandra refers to is the Hadung Cradle of Hope which she first heard about from
Canadian friends who knew the young Kenyan, John Machio who founded it 17 years
ago.
“He had
already started a feeding centre for street children in Ngong, when a Canadian
family gave him USD10,000 to start the shelter,” says Sondra who met Machio in
Toronto and was impressed with him. In part, she says, because he was once a
street boy himself; but he taught himself Taekwondo. After that, he went on the
win top awards in the sport.
Currently
based in Canada where he works three jobs so he can send funds back to Kenya
every month, Machio supports 16 children, ages 10 to 22, and pays school fees
for eight more whom he managed to relocate back to their families.
Sandra
normally designs transmedia projects for a living. But as a creative producer
and director, she prefers working on projects that have social impact like the
one she’s currently doing with Amrish.
“We first
met in Cape Town when we were both working on a music video for the South
African jazz singer, Auriol Hays,” says Sandra who had needed a cinematographooer
and camera equipment, and Amrish had all that.
“We got
along well and as I recalled his family lives here, I called him from Toronto
and asked him to work with me.” Adding that what she also liked about Amrish
was his attitude, his insistence on not producing anything like ‘poverty porn’.
“That’s the media that makes Africans look like impoverished beggars,” he says.
Nonetheless, since they
both agreed to do the project pro bono, they had to figure out how to cover
their costs, namely transport, food and accommodation, including airfare, he
from London, her from Toronto.
“So I set up a ‘go fund
me’ account online,” he says. https://www.gofundme.com/empowering-the-huband-cradle-of-hope-in-kenya.
On it, they
calculated their costs and set a target goal. That account helped them fly here
with their equipment, stay at Airbnb’s and travel back and forth daily to the shelter.
“We took
care not to interview the children on camera,” says Sandra who has no intention
of looking like exploitative voyeurs. “We only take shots of them playing with
the two Canadian volunteers who came with us,” she adds.
“The virtual
reality shots are meant to provide an immersion experience so viewers can see
where and how the children live, and where the funds people give are going,”
says Amrish who studied English Literature at University of Kent in UK. “But
once I assembled a [multimedia] portfolio to commemorate my family’s 100 years
in business in Kenya, I realized how much I’d always loved storytelling. So I
went back to film school in South Africa and eventually started a business
there, providing equipment and services in film and virtual reality
production.”
The ‘social
impact’ that Sandra says she and Amrish aim to achieve with their project is economic
empowerment of the children’s shelter. Noting that Machio’s monthly remittances
are ‘stretched’, Amrish says those funds have to cover the costs of rent, food
and salaries for staff, including the cook, laundress and Matron who Sandra
describes as a mother-figure to the children, while John as like a dad.
“In addition
to covering all that and the children’s school fees (including uniforms and
books), it also pays for one child in boarding school and one at university,”
says Sandra who hopes the new website and all the other digital components
they’re in the process of creating will enable the shelter to grow and Machio
to have more support. “Right now, the man hardly sleeps,” she adds.
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