All of you bold backers should be getting direct messages regarding our doc progress but I want to just clarify the direction of the project. If you look through the updates you'll see back some time ago we parted ways with The Learning Tea Organization. We are still hard at work developing and shooting our documentary focusing on the issue of education for girls in India.  This was the original focus of "The Learning Tea" doc and continues to be our main issue.  

We are working with a great organization in Kolkata.  The Trinita Society for Social and Health Research (www.TrinitaChildren.org) and have been doing media, art and design training with 34 girls in their program.  Our goal is to incorporate the media that the kids are shooting into an interactive web-based doc platform that will include the footage we continue to shoot .   Adding the interactive idea sent our budget up considerably but our long range vision is to create a really cool platform that dives into the layered and complex issues that create barriers to education for young women in India.  

And to be 100% clear.  While we've been developing and working under the banner of "The Cross Stitch Project" which is non-profit in nature and geared toward social entrepreneurship and girls media training, your funding has been entirely directed at building the documentary aspect of our work.  Kickstarter is very straight up about not funding charity and we want you to know we respect that 100%.  We are creative and social engaged people and sometimes our activism gets mixed with our creativity -- but all funding on Kickstarter is dedicated to the film--not the non-profit work.   

Right now the bulk of our updates continue to be on the Cross Stitch Project website (www.CrossStitchProject.org) 

As we build and grow the doc portion of the project -- a site will emerge for it.  We are thinking the title will be "See Me"...but we'll updated you as things progress. 

Our motto has become "keep moving forward"!  We are amazed at what we've accomplished in just a year and know with continued effort we'll produce something really wonderful.  

We appreciate everyone who has supported us from the very beginning and as we have continued to evolve our process -- you are getting a window into the wild and wooly world of documentary filmmaking! 

Check out this video on my vimeo site: http://www.vimeo.com/25910615

We tested the GoPro cameras for an idea we have to create a 3-D experience of the Topsia slum neighborhood.  It is a killer little camera.  Great quality and super sneaky!  (I downloaded this from my vimeo page so hopefully the quality will still come through) 

I know you've all gotten the earlier update about the changes to The Learning Tea Doc but just to clarify for everyone what's next:

We are now "The Cross Stitch Project".  We are building a unique transmedia documentary and educational program in partnership with Georgia State’s Digital Arts and Entertainment Lab. The Cross Stitch Project is a cross-cultural design exchange between Trinita Society’s Girls Empowerment Program in Kolkata, India and Teens in Atlanta, GA. Cross Stitch will connect teenage girls from Kolkata and Atlanta to share creative ideas and processes, learn global enterprise and cross-cultural communication skills through art and design projects. 

But the core of our project is still empowerment for young women and building a documentary film/web experience.  You can follow our progress at www.CrossStitchProject.org.    We will continue to strive toward completion of a documentary on the issues impoverished girls face in India and all funds from this and any future Kickstarter campaign have and will be directly channeled into the film fund -- not our social project.    

If you want to follow more updates and related material to the project we've got a facebook page up: Heads Held High Latest news and developments: We have a phone consultation scheduled in October with Working Films to talk about the projects outreach potential. www.workingfilms.org
They are a great organization and can really help social docs have real impact.

We have a fundraiser in the works for both the film and Trinita Society Kolkata at Young Blood Gallery in Atlanta on November 30th. It's going to be a ton of fun and it's my birthday so if you are in town you'll have to come by. More will be announced closer to the date.

Plans are underway to get back to Kolkata in the end of February to continue shooting.

That's the news for now. We'll keep it coming as the project develops.

Dear Supporters,

It's been a whirlwind trip through India--and as it sometimes happens in the doc world--the journey has led us to a new destination. Katrell has decided that the filmmaking process is just to invasive and distracting to the work she is trying to do with her fledgling organization. So we are moving in different directions at this juncture. Please keep up with her on The Learning Tea website. But what we have learned in India is that the issue of education for the poorest in India--especially girls--is a problem the world needs to see and respond to.

We've met some amazing women and we are spending our last weeks here making new contacts and solidifying some new directions for the project. We are shifting focus to concentrate on girls in the slums in either Kolkata or Mumbai where the problems with the inequities in India's education system are deepest.

I always knew I was a girl who likes slumming it--now I'd like to bring humanity, dignity to the girls and women I've met there and share the sense of powerful oppression, dire poverty, and the overwhelming hope and joy I got to experience.

You all helped us get here and we will continue to make you proud.

P.S. Charlene and I are working our postcard fingers to the bone and those of you who asked for one are in for a treat!

We'll be in the air tomorrow morning! You can follow our adventures on our new blog:

http://learningteadoc.wordpress.com/

So excited to start this journey and thanks again for helping out.

Our tickets are booked! It took the whole 3 thou....but we are on our way! Our new plan is to land in Mumbai and head directly south to Tamil Nadu. Katrell is starting a new location thanks to the generous support she's been getting. So we will be with her as she finds a new orphanage and a new fair trade tea plantation to work with. Then we head up to Darjeeling to check in and see how the progress is coming and meet the girls who are first in line for The Learning Tea scholarships.
We can't wait to get shooting!

Indiewire: the leading news, information, and networking site for independent-minded filmmakers, the industry and moviegoers alike. Winner of the Webby Award for best film website, lauded as a “must read” by Variety, branded the “online heartbeat of the world’s independent film community” by Forbes, and dubbed “best indie crossroads” by film critic Roger Ebert featured “The Learning Tea” Documentary in their “In the Works” column today. How cool is that!

http://www.indiewire.com/article/in_the_works_ross_bros_nola_independence_night_super-heroines_lgbt_roadtrip/

As our departure date gets closer and closer we'll keep you updated with who we've contacted and other exciting news. Elizabeth and I had a great meal and meeting last night with Atlanta via Calcutta filmmaker Mohua Thakurta last night. She's working on a pilot for the Indian equivalent of CNBC and she's very enthusiastic about what we are doing with the Learning Tea. She had some great suggestions of how to stay under the radar while we shoot and told us how the police in North India round up young girls by the truckload and dump them into Mumbai and Calcutta's redlight districts. Another reason young women have no one to turn to--the very people who are charged with their protection are involved with selling young girls. The cops are the criminals--and sadly this is true in many parts of the world where poor young women are bought and sold.
We can't turn a blind eye any longer.

Here is a link to a great article from Nicholas Krisof that accurately describes the situation for so many impoverished women in India who are trapped in sexual slavery.

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/opinion/22kristof.html...

This is what we are fighting to stop and we still have a ways to go to reach our goal in the coming days. Spread the word and help us give voice to women in India.

So I can't divulge the full details but Katrell had a very promising meeting yesterday and a deal is in the works with a nationwide grocery chain to sell The Learning Tea in their stores. This is BIG!!!

What it means for the film is that Katrell's dream to spread the project to other tea producing areas is going to be possible. So we'll be able to follow her as looks for a tea plantation and an orphanage in the region where Assam tea is grown.

I reached out to the YP Foundation in Delhi today. I'm hoping to fly into Delhi to meet with them as our first contacts in India.

The YP Foundation (TYPF) in New Delhi is a youth led and run non-profit in India that develops young people’s leadership skills to take action on issues that young people are passionate about. They have developed a program of peer-to peer community interaction with street and slum children that I'd like to learn more about and I'd really like to hear from the source about how the grassroots youth movement in India is effecting social change.

Hopefully they will take me up on my offer to host a screening or short workshop. I'm really impressed with what they do.

http://www.theypfoundation.org/

Meet Dollina Kharwanlang, graduate student in Women's Studies at Georgia State University and one of the truly great women helping the learning tea project. Dollina is on board as an expert in Dalit rights and women's issues in India. Her mother was an orphan and she grew up hearing stories of how she was shunned while the higher caste girls who attended her convent school were given a first class education. That didn't stop her from raising one smart daughter who wants to do the same for other girls in India considered "not worth the effort".