About Us
Some of you may know what we’re up to and some of you may have no idea but you’ve been told to check us out. Or maybe you’ve just stumbled upon us by mistake! Either way, here’s a little bit about what we’ve done, what we’re doing and what we’re trying to achieve!
So, what have we done? Well, on November 11, 2011, the date read 11/11/11; a once every hundred years occurrence and therefore an ideal opportunity to hold a worldwide event. So we did. We asked people all over this planet of ours to go out and capture a part of their day using film, photography, music, sound and text. We ended up with submissions from 179 countries, which considering there are only 197 (give or take a few depending on where you look), is a pretty decent turnout!
How did we get the word out there? We were working on a pretty miniscule budget, so the majority of our publicity was done using the wonderful world of social media. The likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were pretty handy tools and provided us with an outlet for promoting the project and making sure people around the world had an idea of what we were attempting. We also managed to feature in some interesting media outlets, including newspapers in Cyprus and Mexico, along with TV stations in Lebanon and Bhutan (where we became the first foreigners to be interviewed on their television station – they just have the one – via live feed). Safe to say we were visible in most corners of the world!
And what are we doing now? Since November 12, we have been hard at work in the post-production process of the project. From sorting through photos, to cleaning up audio tracks, to tracking down the original videos from the submitters, we haven’t had a dull moment! We have plenty of work to do before this project is complete, as we aim to produce at least 3 elements from the content we received. We are going to be releasing a photographic book that will incorporate the photos and text that we received, as well as a world-music collection that will carry multiple tracks that were recorded on the day, as well as elements of the soundtrack that will accompany our pièce de résistance! And that pièce is our feature length documentary!
Finally, what are we trying to gain from all this? For one thing, the 11Eleven Project is totally not-for-profit. Profits that we make from the sales of our products will be split equally between our six chosen charities:
- Save the Children
- WWF
- Opportunity International
- Global Voices
- The Hunger Project
These have been chosen extremely carefully by us, as we had to make sure that they will be spending your money wisely, and we know for a fact that they will be! They were also chosen for the alignment with the Millennium Development Goals that were established in 2000 in order to encourage development by improving social and economic conditions in the world’s poorest countries. So a pretty good set of causes, we’re sure you’ll agree!
As well as the charitable aims, we also have a social element to our quest. We want to plant a seed of compassion in the world and allow people all over the planet to gain a perspective of this crazy rock that we all live on. Are people from different parts of the world really that different? Different cultures may have different traditions, but we’re pretty sure a teacher in Madagascar is trying to achieve the same as a teacher in the USA, or a Muslim father wants the same for his children as a Jewish father! We want this to be used as a time capsule for people to look back on and see how the world was in 2011. Our aim is to promote truthful stories from around the globe without the spin that’s involved in media interpretations. This is not an extended news report; this is a truthful interpretation of what really happened on November 11, 2011.
