Next summer a Kilkenny-based group of Young Irish Film Makers (YIFM ) will travel to Ecuador to set up a digital film making project to help young people in danger of becoming street children.
There are a million children and young people living and working on the streets in Ecuador. YIFM will be working at the Don Bosco Centre in the rural town of Chavezpamba. Set up 18 years ago by Salesian priest Father Rafael and his sister Mathilde, the centre started with no income to pay any expenses, but was determined to help young people develop skills that would help them support themselves.
Without the Don Bosco Centre many of Chavezbamba’s children and young people would have a blighted future of drug use, crime, and prostitution on the streets.
YIFM is an innovative youth film training and production organisation based in Kilkenny city. It offers young people aged eight to 18 years the opportunity to make their own film productions to professional standards of excellence. It is committed to producing feature films made by young people for young people. YIFM will send a team of young and adult film makers to deliver film and computer equipment to the Don Bosco Centre. While they are there they will teach all the leaders digital skills to help the children and young people of Chavezbamba to develop work skills through the use of film making and IT.
The idea for this project was initiated by YIFM director Mike Kelly and Salesian priest James O’Halloran. Father O’Halloran has offered 70 per cent of the profits from his new book Pity Beyond All Telling to YIFM to help fund their Ecuador trip. In his introduction to the book, Brendan Kennelly calls it ‘a skilled collection by a gifted writer’.
To raise much needed funds for the project, YIFM is inviting everyone to an Ecuadorean coffee morning tomorrow, November 20, at 10.30am in its premises on the Waterford Road. Entrance and coffee will be free. Pity Beyond All Telling will be available at the special price of €10 (shop price €12.99 ) and Father O’Halloran will attend and be available to sign copies of the book.
