MediaLight Graduation

On March 18 we had the joy of celebrating students from five nations as Media Light 1.0 held its award ceremonies in a gala night attended by local representatives from many ministries. Top honors went to students from three different nations. Thailand’s Noppadon Netsuwan (“Aim” to us) was awarded best Videographer. Filipina Ria Bagatsing took home the trophy for Best Editor. Best Director and the Leadership Award went to Jonny Moore, a missions director from Atlanta, GA. Click here to see winning videos.

Student progress was impressive, especially when you note that many of them had never used a movie camera or an editing program before. Just three weeks into their training we asked them to produce four documentaries.
Click here to see the video that won the best documentary
The group produced a 15 minute fund-raising video for a local Christian school that was needing $500,000 in funding for new facilities. That project took over 100 total hours. Students then turned to making commercials and short videos for the internet.

In addition to video training (from Shane, Di and Paul) everyone received training in

* blogging (Joyce)
* graphics creation using Photoshop (Rory)
* radio station operation (Ron)

Our teachers were hugely qualified and experienced in their fields and we will always be grateful that so many came at their own expense to train our students so they can serve as Christian voices in Asia.

Special Thanks to Diane and Shane Vermooten, Paul Richardson, Rory Morales & Ron and Joyce Titular for the outstanding contribution as teachers.

We also want to thank the 10 person Emerge ministries team here in Chiang Rai for their sacrifice and dedication and to all the churches who supported us for the project’s first running.

Special thanks in this regard has to go to Bay Community, Tuscaloosa COG, Grace Fellowship and Mount Paran COG
for believing in the vision of the school and for supporting it so sacrificially in those early days.

What’s next? Now that school is out locally, we will use April and May for Thai discipleship camps that use either media training or learning English as the drawing card for the local camps.

Our next MediaLight will open in September and will run for 10 weeks. We will accept 20 students max. Five may come from the USA. If you know of anyone interested please contact me directly by email through clicking here.