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SAWBO is proud to present the third in a series of spotlight portraits highlighting the work of some of our collaborators around the world. They all have unique experiences and innovative uses of our animations, and we are happy to have the opportunity to show the positive work that they all have been doing in different corners of the globe.
As always, please feel free to share your suggestions with us at animations@illinois.edu.
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CARL BURKYBILE
HEALING HANDS INTERNATIONAL
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My name is Carl Burkybile and I am the Director of Agriculture for Healing Hands International (HHI). Our organization’s goal is twofold; (1) we provide aid when international disasters occur such as medical supplies, food, and clean water and (2) we focus on development in areas such as training teachers, providing educational resources, drilling water wells, teaching sustainable agriculture, forming women’s coop groups to empower women, and funding community development projects. My specific role as HHI Director of Agriculture is to help people help themselves through our survival gardening training. Men, women, school children, orphans, and even prisoners learn to feed their family and earn an income.
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My friend Bruce Henrikson introduced me to Scientific Animations Without Borders. When he showed me their work I thought it would be great if SAWBO and I could work together. Through the development of animated videos in multiple languages a whole new group of people could be reached with this important training. We were both happy that we could make this a reality, and we started working together at the end of 2013. Once the animations were done, I started using them in my U.S. workshops as well as places where I have traveled like South America and Haiti. Also HHI trainers located in Africa, Central America and Baja, Mexico are using the animations. Although we are mainly using the Survival Gardening animations series, we are also showing health related animations on topics like Ebola. Right now, the most successful device we use to watch the animations is the computer but I hope that the 3gp files, the ones formatted for cell phones, will be able to change the lives of poor illiterate farmers and their families.
After around 6 months of sharing the animation I would estimate that over 1,000 people have been impacted by the survival gardening video, with that number growing each day. In addition to U.S. workshops in Texas, Arkansas, Illinois, and Indiana, people from Honduras, El Salvador, South Sudan, Kenya, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and Guyana are using the animations to learn Survival Gardening. In some areas this information can actually make the difference between death and survival. As people gain these skills is it our hope that they move from survival to living productive lives.
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I had an excellent experience working with SAWBO, and the resulting animations are everything I hoped they would be. In the future I would love to keep working with SAWBO creating new animations related with purifying water and maintaining a garden.
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