A team from Harding University is leaving on New Year’s Day to go to Gonaives, Haiti, for nine days to produce films for a health series.
O’Neal Tankersley, missionary in residence and leader of the trip, has been working on this film series since 2003. The series was created to educate Haitians on preventative ways to improve health and living conditions. Episodes from this series are 15 to 20 minutes in length and cover a range of topics from hygiene to nutrition to fire safety. The team will be working with local Christians to make the films in Haitian Creole language.
Tankersley goes to Haiti at least once a year and normally takes one or two others to help with the videos. He tries to find people who are interested in film making, because this trip can act as on-the-job training and experiential learning.
“I’m interested in teaching Christian young people who want to make Christian films just like I’ve been doing,” Tankersley said.
This year there are eight people on the team. Since their team is twice the size as usual they will be doing twice the work. The team plans to split into two crews to film two different videos. James Rucker, who graduated Harding with a degree in media, is returning for a third trip to Haiti as a co-director to lead one of the film crews.
The first crew will work on a development film on re-forestation to prevent erosion where much of the tree cover has been cut.
The second crew will work on a church leadership film, especially working with youth. It will be a compilation of skits communicating messages of honesty, kindness, modesty and other pertinent topics from a Christian perspective. The local Christian teenagers will act out the skits in Creole in order to help interpret the message.
“We hope to be able to leave behind, or come back and edit and help them with, a whole album of at least 10, ideally 20 little skits that have Christian messages for young people,” Tankersley said.
Tankersley and his teams throughout the years have made three full DVDs to give to people who have the means to share them with others in Haiti. Local churches use the videos at various church meetings or gatherings.
Junior Zak Kelley joined the team at the end of September when Tankersley asked him what his dreams in life were.
“I prayed and I said ‘God if (video work) is what I can do, then open up the doors for it,'” Kelley said. “The next day O’Neal was like ‘Come to Haiti,’ and that’s when I knew I had to go to Haiti, like this was the door.”
