Jake Viramontez is the founding filmmaker and chief storyteller of Sown, Storytelling For Good. The organization awards a select number of nonprofits every year to tell their story free of charge, and Viramontez has worked closely with the Create Action Grant Program to help produce the winning organizations’ videos. He has been to over 60 countries and made films in almost every sort of circumstance, and his experiences have led him to create the Sown Passport Program. “The idea was pretty simple,” he explains. “To select five young filmmakers, aspiring documentary filmmakers from all over the country, who’ve never really left the country, to go on a trip to Africa to make a story for a nonprofit organization.” The video below shares more about the program and the group's journey.

Throughout the Passport Program, led by Viramontez, the five selected traveled to Africa on a 10-day journey to tell a story for the Rwanda nonprofit, Kigali Children’s Center. The group learned the ins and outs of producing a high quality, international documentary film firsthand, and each aspiring filmmaker received a brand new Sony camera, Sony cinema lens and other filmmaking accessories. At the conclusion of the Program, each left with a passport, a credit on a professional documentary film and an experience of a lifetime.

The program started with the group gathering in Toronto with Mark Bone and his Art Of Documentary team. The group received tips for transforming their films in preparation for their journey to Africa. Once they arrived in Africa, they heard from nonprofit leaders on the importance of capturing these stories and showing people that they matter.

“There is no greater project I’ve ever worked on in my entire life than this one,” says Viramontez. “I know with certainty that each one of these filmmakers now has the tools, the community and the access to create whatever they want to create when they go home. To be whatever kind of change agents they want to be in their cities and their communities, because I think the key insight into how do we find meaning and purpose in this life, it’s the oldest question that we’ve been asking ourselves, the irony is it’s not actually about us. It’s about what you can give to someone else. It’s about what you can create for someone else. And then the cosmic repercussion of that is tenfold for what it does for your life.”

He concludes, “No one person can make all of the change that the world needs to see, but if we all play our part in our corners, together we can say that we’ve accomplished something incredible.”

Learn more about the Sown Passport Program HERE.