Madhu and Meghna's visit to Stanford

Madhu and Meghna are modern-day heroes, who've followed their heart to serve society by making films that inspire us to serve. We had the good fortune last Saturday to hear their personal story, interspersed with clips of films they've made and films they've inspired others to make. It all started when, at a critical moment of decision-making, they received a $3,000 state-of-the-art film camera with a smile card. Until that point, they were wavering, with their heart was pulling them to start a venture to inspire spiritual filmmaking in India, but their pockets were empty. To this day, they do not know who gifted them the camera. But they took the gift as a sign that when there is a great desire to do good, the means will follow.

So, Madhu and Meghna decided to trust the universe and start their journey, and boy, what a journey! They've founded Mam Movies (Mam means "I am" in Sanskrit), which among other things, organizes a yearly event, titled "I am the Change," where 101 filmmaker teams get paired with 101 NGOs to tell stories of service in 101 hours. The event is a work-in-progress with Madhu and Meghna innovating on the format each year. Here is their open-source film store (where everything on display is a gift). Bringing the gift economy to filmmaking is a terrific idea. A new initiative of Mam Movies is Metta Media.

We've snagged them to blog for Sarvodaya (check Whole Films), so stay tuned on their adventures. Their work is a great gift to society and we are very grateful to have been touched by these two unique individuals and we look forward to a future visit from them.

Here are some photographs from their visit:

Group Discussions...	Madhu explaining a point...
Sarvodaya and CharityFocus friends..	Varun, Meghna and Kapeesh..

Outside the Bechtel International Center, Stanford University

# posted by Capital Socialist/Social Capitalist @ 11:16 AM