Announcing the 1st Recipient of DGNL Gives Back

Creating video and content marketing is essential for organizations to raise brand awareness and foster growth.

Many organizations don’t have the budget to create quality content – so we launched our initiative DGNL Gives Back to donate video and design services to one nonprofit organization each year.

After our team cast their anonymous ballots, we’re thrilled to announce the first recipient of our new initiative – the nonprofit organization Art for Refugees in Transition (A.R.T.). Their mission is to help rebuild individual and community identity for refugees worldwide.

Drawing upon the indigenous art forms of each community, A.R.T.’s programs are designed to enable the elders of that culture to educate and incorporate the younger generation into their cultural traditions.

By developing self-sustaining curricula and training programs, A.R.T. engages children and adults in visual, performing, and creative arts drawn from their own cultures.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Our team just had a great first creative meeting with Sara Green the Executive Director of Art for Refugees in Transition. We got the download on the breadth of the incredible work her organization does.

Over the course of their 20+ years of operation, they have launched programs across the globe, in South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. It was really inspiring to hear Sara share powerful stories about the difference A.R.T. programs have made for refugees over the years. In particular, she shared a memory from when she was in a refugee camp in Burma.

She asked an elderly woman refugee if there was anything she wanted to pass on creatively.

The people in this particular camp are from a hill tribe where they don’t have a written language, they’re illiterate and everything is passed on by oral tradition. The woman started singing as a response to Sara’s question. As she started singing hundreds of older people came to this clearing – they were in the middle of the jungle with no running water, no electricity.

As these people start coming out of the jungle, Sara notices someone arriving with a gong and someone with a flute, and a couple of people with drums, and all of a sudden all these old people started singing and dancing and crying together. Sara didn’t know what was going on so she asked this woman what happened? I just asked a question about what you’d like to share. ‘

The elderly woman said,
“we’ve been in these camps for over 15 years and it’s the first time anyone has given us permission to feel.”

We’re thrilled to be working with Sara to collect and filter through video and photo assets to incorporate into a new sizzle reel for the organization. More updates to come!

If you’re a nonprofit that wants to be considered for our next giveaway, please reach out to Lillian (@) dgnl.co and we’ll add you to our early notification list.

x Team DGNL