BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) A group of five former Auburn University students has started a nonprofit organization that helps mission groups by making documentaries, offering graphic design, producing Web sites and creating other media to highlight the work of missionaries.
“For organizations who don’t have the funds to produce media, but do have a need for it, we will do it for free,” said photographer Stephen DeVries, executive director of Bedouins International.
Paul Bryant, the group’s associate director, does videography. They team with graphic designer Josh Farneman, musician Roger Eason and fund-raiser Jessi Lambert, all working out of a downtown Birmingham loft.
Bedouins International recently premiered a 42-minute documentary, “Caribbean Gold: The Vanilla Bean Project.” The film follows a Haitian mission run by Anne Jordan-Reynolds, a sociologist who started a school that has 300 students from kindergarten through 12th grade in a village called Coco Beach.
“Without education, there’s not a whole lot of hope to make things better,” she said. “We’re in one of the remotest areas of Haiti.”
She also began cultivating vanilla bean vines, hoping the village could subsist with proceeds from growing vanilla beans.
“It took us five years to grow it,” Jordan-Reynolds said. “It’s labor-intensive and it takes a long time. That’s one reason vanilla is so expensive. I was looking for a crop that might generate decent income.”
It was a promising idea, but she needed help telling the story. “Stephen and Bedouins were phenomenal,” Jordan-Reynolds said.
The Bedouins team accompanied her to Haiti in September, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Hundreds of Haitians had died; thousands lost homes.
“It was as horrible as it gets,” Jordan-Reynolds said. “I was worried for their safety.”
She said she tried to talk DeVries and his team out of going, suggesting they wait for better conditions. She said they insisted on seeing the conditions as they were.
Bedouins International started in March 2006 when DeVries, then an Auburn student on a class project, went to Mexico and stayed at an orphanage across the border from McAllen, Texas. Bedouins has gone on to work with nearly a dozen mission groups.
“Typically, (missionary groups) come to us,” DeVries said. “People have caught wind of what we’re doing. We hope that it will continue to grow.”
In January, DeVries will leave for Kenya, accompanying a medical mission team affiliated with Integrity Worldwide, based in Selma, Ala.
“There are people who have a lot to say and need people to pay attention, but they don’t have media that catches people’s attention,” said DeVries. “The vast majority of nonprofits have very poor media. A great Web site, beautiful photos and video can go a long way.”
-Greg Garrison
