12/9/2011: The Backyard Philly Project

For today's donation, I decided to donate to a project that a couple of friends from highschool are working on. Their org (they're working on 501(c)3 status), Ferasha Films, is a documentary film company. Their team members are all volunteers, and they have started a new documentary called the Backyard Philly Project, which will follow four teenagers from Philadelphia. Each of the teens will be filming their own stories in their neighborhood, Penn Town, using FlipCams. The teens will also be attending classes on cinematography and will get monthly topic assignments for them to film for their "video journals."

You can learn more about them here.

AND you can donate to their project here! Donations go through IndieGoGo, which bills itself as "the world's leading international funding platform." Who knew?! It looks very similar to Kickstarter, but without the exclusivity of only funding arts-related projects.

Admittedly, part of what drew me toward making this donation is that my friend Brendan has committed himself to learning and performing, on youtube, a song of your choice, in exchange for a five dollar donation. I'll be making him learn Start Wearing Purple by Gogol Bordello. He's already completed a video of himself playing It's Tricky by Run DMC for someone else who donated. Here's the link to that.