Preparation: Service via Video Project

Plan Your Service Video

These videos are designed to inspire young people around the world to experience the joy and meaning that come from helping others. In these videos, you may describe a major project your club has done, or an organization doing noble work in your community, or the efforts of a single volunteer.

Consider these questions: Does the video tell a compelling story? Will those who watch it consider how they might help with the effort, or start a similar effort in their communities? Are you using the power of media to effectively strengthen the telling of the story?

We encourage you to talk through ideas before ever picking up a camera, and to read all the material in these project pages carefully. Next Vista for Learning works to follow rules related to privacy and intellectual property carefully, and a little extra time now could keep your video from being unusable as part of the project.

Watch Samples

As you plan your video, we suggest you watch several example videos to get an idea of how you might approach your own effort. What ideas can you get from what you see? What weaknesses do you see that you can avoid? For your video, how can you incorporate a variety of media (images, audio and video interviews, footage of activities, etc.) to make the video compelling? As you would guess, the strongest stories are those that come from good groundwork and proper planning.

Understand the Rules

One focus at Next Vista for Learning is to help people learn to find and properly use copyright-friendly media. Please take time to review the rules carefully so that your video can be considered for the contest. Contest finalists will have to have followed all the rules.