Non-Profit Video Shot in Honduras

Karen Lustgarten just returned from a video shoot in Honduras to produce a mini-documentary for CHIMES (California – Honduran Institute for Medical & Educational Support), a humanitarian nonprofit organization that arranges all-volunteer medical missions to isolated Garifuna people living the Ciriboya, a remote northern village.

Lustgarten wrote a script about the NGO for the video mini-documentary, then produced and directed it on location with a cameraman. To reach the Garifuna village, half of the eight-hour drive time from the airport was along rotten terrain covered with huge rocks and deep potholes. She blogged about this fascinating trek to a region few people experience.

CHIMES organized the journey for some 40 U.S., Cuban and Cuban-educated Garifuna medics to this far flung Honduran region for a 10-day medical conference and volunteer medical mission delivering health care services to the Garifunas. They are a distinct ethnic group (blend of African and indigenous Caribbean Indian) with their own language and culture intact since the 17th century. Living in poverty and isolation, most have never seen a doctor or a pill. They die of treatable diseases like lacerations, malnutrition, stomach parasites and childbirth in part because roads to this region are impassable; they are not a government priority.

Videotaping included the need of these secluded non-Latino Hondurans for free medicine and health care provided by volunteer medical brigades. Video includes Garifuna culture, medical seminars, treatment and doctors arriving with cartons of donated medicine for the Garifuna Medical Center, built by the community with funds from CHIMES. Lustgarten is in post-production on the mini-documentary to be completed and posted the end of September.

Karen Lustgarten has written /produced/directed/co-edited some 80 video mini-documentaries, commercials and TV segments for U.S. and international nonprofit organizations, NGOs and for-profit businesses. She has traveled to Vietnam, Rwanda, Haiti, Honduras, Antarctica, Canada and throughout the U.S. to produce them. She blogged and posted photos after each assignment. “I love producing broadcast quality videos, especially for nonprofits that have an important message to get out,” she says.

Her blogs and videos can be viewed at www.karenlustgarten.com. Photos from the field with captions are at www.picasaweb.google.com/hawaiikaren. Contact: info@mediakl.com.

PRESS RELEASE


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