CORD

• Project Type: Volunteer Internship
• Location: Siddhbari
• Year: 2019
• Tools Used: Adobe Premiere Pro, Canon 1500D.

CORD (Chinmaya Organisation for Rural Development) is an NGO, part of the Chinmaya Mission. Their areas of work range from assisting villagers with their livelihoods in agriculture and dairy production to facilitating clean sewage systems and the treatment and rehabilitation of People with Disabilities, among others.

During my internship with them, I did a wide range of tasks from clerical work like sorting and streamlining their databases and proof-reading official documents to going on field tours with the workers and photographing the beneficiaries and so on.

These two short videos were planned, shot and edited by me in a week-long period as part of my internship at CORD. These were made with the intention of serving two purposes.

The first was to raise awareness about cerebral palsy and such diseases that commonly afflict the residents of such remote places, as well as their condition due to lack of access to affordable quality healthcare.

The second was for CORD to use these as promotional media for themselves to be able to spread word about their work, hopefully resulting in more support, funding and so on, enabling them to expand their reach and assist more people.

A video on Riddhima, a girl suffering from Spastic Cerebral Palsy.

Since both videos were documentaries, there was no set treatment for the films; no pre-decided storyboards or shot lists. The plan was to simply have a conversation with the parents of the children, and with the children if possible, to record those conversations and construct a meaningful narrative from that; one which did justice to the situation of the families as well as CORD’s efforts and successes.

A video on Sathvik, a boy suffering from Spastic Cerebral Palsy.