Words: Sarah Stone, Director and Founder of Stone Barrell
If you’re going to travel to the other side of the world for a wedding, you may as well make good use of the flight by offering to get high-quality content for some brilliant nonprofits at an affordable price, right?!
Earlier this year, Jake and I packed our sunscreen, shorts, sunglasses and other travel essentials (cameras, drone, mics, highlighters, consent forms… that sort of thing) and headed for Guatemala, I with my family, he with his (now) fiance. (Is a blog an appropriate place to correct the commonly held misconception that we’re a couple?! I don’t know, but I’m doing it…)
What followed was:
- Let’s be honest, an incredible holiday (and my sister’s epic wedding, congratulations Becky and Camilo!)
- Two wonderful weeks listening to powerful stories and gathering videos and photos for three great nonprofits
The concept: one trip, multiple nonprofits, lower price (for our clients and the climate)
One of our founding ideas as Stone Barrell was to help nonprofits get impactful stories from their project locations and project participants without a huge price tag or carbon footprint. Our plan was to pool organisations together, so they could split the expense of sending a small (but mighty) communications team to one of the countries where they worked – getting the bespoke content they needed, for a much lower cost.
Guatemala was our pilot (disclaimer: we paid for our own flights for this one) and as you can see from the video, it was pretty amazing!
The Guatemala pool
Three organisations signed up for our Guatemala pool – Church Mission Society (CMS), Viva and a Christian academy providing education for children in rural Guatemala.
We met men who had been living on the streets and struggling with drug addiction, who are now helping other young people have better opportunities. We met inspiring parents who are changing children’s lives through foster care. We met adults who are pursuing their dreams thanks to the education they were gifted.
And we had the opportunity to hear and record their stories, so that more people can discover the impact they’re having in Guatemala.
In 8 days we:
- Filmed in 10 locations
- Conducted 19 interviews
- Took 2,073 photos
- Recorded 16+ hours of content
- And met some genuinely amazing people
One of those people is Danilo. His story is now up on the CMS website – have a read! We’ll share the rest of the content we gathered as and when it goes live. We can’t wait for you to see it!
What our nonprofit clients in Guatemala had to say:
“The two days I spent working with Sarah and Jake from Stone Barrell were an absolute delight. They worked professionally and sensitively to the contexts we were filming in and made the whole process fun too. I would highly recommend them not only for their quality of work, attention to detail and creativity but also for hanging out with fun and interesting people who are clearly very passionate about what they do.”
– Azaria, Church Mission Society, Guatemala
“Working with Sarah and Jake was a great experience. They are professional and kind people. Highly recommended! 100%”
– Karina, Viva, Guatemala
Click here to watch the behind-the-scenes video Viva Guatemala made of our time filming with them.
Guatemala, you were beautiful.
Interested in commissioning Stone Barrell to gather content from one of your overseas projects? Get in touch, we’d love to chat!
