Getting An Early Start

This past week has been busy for me, but I feel as though I have accomplished a lot because it's only July and I already have almost all of the filming completed for my capstone project. After meeting with Debbie from the Lawrence County Community Action Partnership, I was able to get some good background information on the organization that I am focusing my project on, His Hands Ministries. I also met with the other 5 women in charge of the organization who would be helping me throughout the week.

His Hands Ministries is basically a large work project that runs through LCCAP and takes place one week out of the summer each year. The idea is to help out residents throughout Lawrence County with household jobs or projects that they may not be able to do themselves. Volunteers do everything from trimming bushes, to painting, to building wheelchair ramps. This was the 5th year for His Hands and there were between 30-40 different projects going on throughout the area.

Before the week started, I received a packet of information from Lynn at LCCAP, which contained all the houses addresses and a brief biography of each family receiving help from His Hands Ministries. Then each morning I called Lynn to get a list of all the houses the volunteers would be working on that day. Each day I made my rounds to about 5 or 6 houses to film the volunteers in action. I'm so glad I had a GPS, because the houses were all over the county and I definitely would have been lost. I went to houses in West Pittsurg, Harlansburg, Volant, New Castle, and other places I've never been before. I spent between 5 and 6 hours each day driving to different houses, filming, and interviewing people. By the end of the week I ended up with about 2 to 3 hours of footage, including about 15 interviews with different volunteers and homeowners. Not only did I get a lot of video, but I also made sure I took my digital camera to get lots of stills.

On Friday, after all the work was completed, LCCAP held a luncheon for all the volunteers and homeowners. The leaders of His Hands from LCCAP had asked me a week earlier if I would be able to make a slideshow of pictures in order to play at the luncheon. So Thursday night I spent a few hours going through all the pictures I had taken and created a 15-minute slideshow using MovieMaker. After playing it I got a lot of great feedback from people at the luncheon especially from the 5 women in charge.

So now that I have a good start on my project there is one more thing I would like to finish before I go back to school. I have not interviewed Debbie yet from LCCAP. She was in Harrisburg during most of the week that His Hands was going on so I'm hoping I can schedule a time to meet with her before the summer is over. Other than that, I have A LOT of editing to do once I get back to school. However, I'm glad I got the filming part done so hopefully I can get a lot of my editing done before other Capstone students need to use the edit bays for their projects.

Not only was this past week a great accomplishment for me, but it also was very interesting. I met so many people throughout this experience including the homeowners and volunteers. After I told them what I was working on they all thought it was such a great idea and were very thankful that I was trying to help out the organization for next year. So not only is this project my ticket to graduation, but it's also a great way of helping out my community which gives it even more purpose.