Awareness Into Action: Inception's Connection

This series of posts documents two ordinary folks attempting to get out there and do good. Over the next few months, we’ll follow them through the setbacks and triumphs of their endeavor to take the inspiration of Mountainfilm and turn it into something tangible. (To catch up. start here.)

After having little luck thus far, Jenny and I began a fierce email and Skype campaign. We wrote countless cover letters and agonized over our resumes. We set up the webcam at all hours to Skype with members of organizations in disparate and exotic time zones. The summer months flew by, each one threatening to condemn us to another winter of domestic drudge (I exaggerate…we do live in Telluride, after all). Then, all at once, our efforts began to bear fruit. Having been vetted and nominally approved of by our domestic contacts, we were put in touch with people on the ground. Being introduced to these folks was the tipping point: these were the people who had a specific vision for how we could help. All of a sudden we had several opportunities. (I credit the majority of this to Jenny. She was tireless in pursuing leads and took setbacks in stride. I mostly pouted.) This leads us to where we are today. We have been invited to work with an organization (well known to Mountainfilm devotees) called “Free the Slaves” and, through them, the Social Support Foundation in Ghana. Both organizations are dedicated to fighting modern-day slavery. Now that what we’ll be doing has finally been established, we have to take care of all the chores necessary to actually get us to Ghana: obtain visas; buy plane tickets; get the required and suggested vaccinations; rent our apartment (or store all our furniture); inform the bank of our travels; suspend our cell phones; change health insurance; etc. etc. etc. Checking off all these to-do items will, hopefully, be less arduous than it was connecting with an organization – we’ll know better next Thursday!