Your Life Matters
Client: Reading Partners, South Carolina
About this Project
Reading Partners is a national literacy non-profit that utilizes one-on-one tutoring with community volunteers in low-income schools to help kids master basic reading skills. Their South Carolina branch has been a part of the Charleston educational landscape since 2013 and hosts an annual Books and Breakfast fundraiser to highlight local authors and raise money to support their programming. Reading Partners commissioned us to produce a short storytelling video about local author Chris Singleton to show at their 2021 breakfast.
Chris Singleton began his career as a professional minor league baseball player, but later rose to prominence as an inspirational speaker after his mother (and 8 others) was murdered in a racially motivated killing at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in June, 2015. In addition to bringing his message of resilience, forgiveness and unity to audiences around the country, Chris is the author of two children's books, Different – A Story About Loving Your Neighbor and Your Life Matters. Chris's books and others are given out for free to Reading Partners students through their Diverse Books Project. To highlight this partnership, we came up with the idea of Chris posing as a tutor to work with young children and then later revealing that he was the author of the book they were reading.
The original plan was to show the storytelling video at Reading Partners in-person event, but due to COVID-19 concerns, the entire event was shifted to a virtual event. We then helped Reading Partners film additional remote interviews and fundraising elements to add to turn the storytelling video into a full virtual event.
Related Links
The full Books and Breakfast virtual event.
