This Holiday Season Support ReFOCUS Media Labs Network

BREAKING NEWS: ReFOCUS MEDIA LABS
EXPANDS INTO GLOBAL NETWORK WITH 3 LABS

This #holidayseason we're setting a big goal and hoping to raise 30.000 € (10.000 € per lab). Your support will help us maintain our current media Labs in Lesvos, Athens and Cracow by matching grants from our sponsors Allianz Foundation and Choose Love.

Your generous contribution makes a huge impact in the lives of refugees and asylum seekers by providing over 17 team members with employment, lowering the ratio of media creation tools to students in our professional training programs, and by financing our original film productions in 2023.

We hope you will be inspired and help us reach our goal this holiday season, every donation makes a difference in real lives passionately developing real skills to actualise real

Donating ensures our filmmakers and citizen journalists have access to modern creation tools and professional training. All donations (small and large) are having immediate impacts on individual lives.

Back in January we agreed that 2022 would be
“OUR YEAR TO PUSH”
-PUSH our creative boundaries
-PUSH into new communities and establish new media labs in Athens and Cracow
-PUSH our alumni to produce new original films
-PUSH our students and co-creators further than they could imagine was possible
-PUSH through the challenges and continue to prove a small family of creators CAN have outsized impacts on real lives and enable real futures!

A quick glance through NEWS on our website, and you’ll see we’ve gone far beyond our own ambitious mark. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who made 2022 such a resounding success!

SUPPORT THE NETWORK
We wouldn’t have made it this far without the generous and sustained support of individuals like you all, but we’ve got even bigger plans we need your help with.

Our programming is possible thanks to matching grants from our long-standing sponsors Allianz Foundation, Choose Love, and #LeaveNoOneBehind.

But we need your help in making that match!
You can be part of this success by supporting during this #GivingSeason.

SOME EXAMPLES OF HOW YOUR DONATION SUPPORTS OUR STUDENTS

20€…a monthly bus pass to travel to/from class for 1 month.
20€...20GB of data to upload files from mobile devices
35€…secure access to Adobe Creative Cloud software for 1 month.
50€…a pro-grade 64GB SDHC Memory Card.
100€…a 2TB external hard drive to store their original media.
150€…a pro-grade tripod or monopod
200€…a pro-grade directional microphone
250€...a Zoom H6N Audio Recorder
500€…a pro-grade gimbal
1000€…a mirrorless digital camera for photo/video production
1500€…a pro-grade laptop for media post-production

Sponsoring ReFOCUS immediately helps us…
200€…utilities for maintaining our classroom on Lesvos for 1 month.
500€…rent for our classroom on Lesvos for 1 month.
750€…monthly bus passes for ALL ReFOCUS students for 1 month.
1000€…lunch for ALL ReFOCUS students for 1 week.
1500€…a mirrorless camera kit for program-wide use.
2000€…a pro-grade post-production kit for program-wide use.
2500€…program-wide site license for all Adobe Creative Cloud programs.
6000€…rent for our classroom on Lesvos for 1 academic year.

Please consider donating to ReFOCUS because this is about real lives in need of real skills to ensure our students pursue real futures.

Wishing you the very best for this holiday season, and hoping we can count on your support to make 2023 even greater than ‘22!

Sonia & Douglas Nandzik-Herman,
and our entire ReFOCUS Family

LEARN MORE:
FOLLOW- @refocusmedialabs
VISIT US- www.refocusmedialabs.org

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SOME HISTORY & OUR MISSION
ReFOCUS: Real LIVES- Real SKILLS- Real FUTURES

Back in 2016 we came to the Greek island of Lesvos to provide immediate humanitarian support for people seeking asylum on Europe's southern border. This experience impacted us deeply, most especially how desperate the need was for education and skills development, which to this day is not formally available.

Tens of thousands of teenage and young adults continue to flee their countries due to conflict, war, persecution or extreme poverty. After spending long years on their way to a safe place, they lose crucial years of education lingering in refugee camps waiting for asylum. Meanwhile, this loss of education and time compromises their dreams and aspirations as most will stay registered as unemployed or will be forced into accepting low-paying unskilled jobs to support their families.

Back in the beginning we started with nothing more than an idea and a leap of faith-

instead of bringing news of the crisis into western classrooms, what would happen if we brought the media classroom to the crisis? Could we flip an extreme negative of educational displacement into an inspiring positive of 21st century skill development and professional employability?

6 years later the creativity, passion, dedication and professional successes of our students proves our leap was more than worth it!

Through photography, video production, sound, graphic and web design our programming ensures that refugees spending long months and even years waiting for asylum enter the labor force of host countries with modern, marketable skills.

ReFOCUS is about support and sustainability. For these reasons, we fundraise to bring computers, media creation tools and teachers into camps and community centers to train asylum seekers while they wait indefinitely. A major goal of our training is to help refugees learn skills by producing original content, host and promote their work in exhibitions open to the public. In addition, we're building a support network of artists and teachers to help promote their work wherever they secure asylum.

Since our humble beginnings ReFOCUS artists and citizen journalists have produced multiple feature films, and traveling multimedia exhibitions, and are regular contributing partners with mainstream media to ring the alarm bell over human rights abuses along Europe's borders.

For more info and regular updates on our programming please visit us on social media-
FB/IG/YT/SC: @refocusmedialabs
Our Website- www.refocusmedialabs.org