Jessica Kizorek is a Self-Expression and Leadership program leader for Landmark Education and a founding partner of Two Parrot productions, a video production company that specializes in getting out the word about worthy charities around the globe. Kizorek also recently wrote a book, titled Show Me: Marketing with Video on the Internet that helps readers use video to market their businesses in a variety of ways. She was recently interviewed by the Networlding Blog about her non-profit work and its relationship to the Self-Expression and Leadership program.
Tell us about your non-profit work and how you got involved there.
My father and I are both involved in this organization called Landmark Education. I lead the SELP (Self Expression in Leadership Program). He did that program, and his project was to go over to Thailand and, while there, to videotape and do a short documentary for a non-profit organization. He consequently was deeply moved by using his expertise with camera and video to communicate what these people were doing over there. He was so moved by it, as was I, that we really saw an opportunity to create a business model that was primarily philanthropic in nature. We donate a lot of our services to these on-going projects. In Tanzania, for example, we’re working for an organization called Kids of Kilimanjaro. The kids in this neck of the woods have to walk two hours to get to school. Because it’s so poverty-ridden, they literally did not have the food it took to walk four hours a day. This organization started a school lunch program. All the kids get fed at school, and the attendance rate is close to 100% now. So we go over there and shoot these films and do it free of charge. They pay for the editing on the post-production side. We do about 8-12 jobs like that a year.
How do you fund these projects?
We use the frequent flyer miles we’ve built up over the years. We donate our time.
We typically work with projects that are outside of the United States, but they have to be pretty significant sized. They pay about $15,000 on the post-production side of things. It requires that they have a marketing budget. But a lot of these organizations would never be able to afford what we provide them.
Before, having a website used to be enough. But now, people are so oriented around audio visual communications that when you can’t communicate that way with potential donors and potential givers, organizations are really missing out on an opportunity to pull people’s heartstrings.
There’s more information about Jessica, her book and her business at the Two Parrots web site.
Rosy Maria of Hampton, England, has brought youth together inside of her project, titled Hampton’s Street Dance and Music Festival, while taking Landmark’s Self-Expression and Leadership Program. The project she created, with the partnership of fellow youth worker Peter Moorcock, attracted the attention of The Informer newspaper of the Hampton area. The article appears below.