Many of the best new ideas are so simple one can wonder why they took so long to come up with in the first place. Once a great idea is out there everyone wants to jump on board, and so, naturally, Cultivate was honored when Elim Christian Services approached us to create a testimonial video in support of their three-year old, up-and-coming, and dare I say brilliant, Hope Packs program.

Elim is an organization that has been faithfully serving the needs of people with learning and developmental disabilities on Chicago’s Southside for over sixty years. Elim provides many invaluable services, including a fully accredited school for students aged three to twenty-one, and an adult services program that offers Elim’s adult clients challenging employment opportunities befitting of their skills.

One of the central tenets of Elim’s mission is to remove the stigma that still exists towards people with disabilities. They believe and practice the idea that people with disabilities are not supposed to be objects of pity, but instead can be active and valuable participants in society. The Hope Packs program is one of the greatest evidences of this philosophy. For years Elim has provided adults with the opportunity to work and earn a paycheck, but the Hope Packs program takes it one valuable step further through the provision of rewarding work.

Here’s the short version of how it works. In 2007, Elim began partnering with well-established ministries that provide school supplies, hygiene kits and food packs to people in need around the world. In order for these organizations to do this, someone needs to provide the supplies for these kits and someone needs to put them together. This is where Elim comes in. Elim runs the supply drives through local organizations and churches, and then Elim adults package up the bounty and get it ready to ship. The most important thing to note here is that Elim adults don’t just do the packaging, they also go out to churches to garner support for the supply drives. And last year, for the first time, they even delivered the Hope Packs. Four Elim adults were able to travel to Peru and Haiti on what Elim now calls an Outreach Trip to hand out the packs that they had put together. The results of this program have been amazing. The meaningful work has brought life-changing inspiration to many of Elim’s adults. This is the story we set out to capture…

Elim, like many good organizations, doesn’t have a huge marketing budget. Yet Elim’s development staff does a lot to spread the word and garner support. At Cultivate, we pride ourselves on being able to partner with organizations like Elim to craft beautiful and effective creative concepts that work within a budget. We are not a creative outlet mall or a snobby boutique; we just understand what it’s really like out there, and we make great marketing happen anyway.

To that end, we came up with a concept for a five-minute testimonial video and a one-minute commercial that could be shot in one day, in one location. We went to Elim’s Vocational Skills Center in Orland Park, Illinois, conducted a couple key interviews with Elim adults and staff, and documented the Hope Packs being assembled. We also decided to use existing photographs of the program in action to fill in the rest of the story.

View the Supply Hope Commercial

View the Hope Packs Testimonial

In the end, the key to the success of these videos is that they are rooted in Elim’s approach to their clientele. Elim adults’ Steve Hamstra, Gail Gard and Bob Hillegonds are the stars of the Hope Packs Testimonial Video. Elim adult John Wrenn is the star of the Supply Hope commercial. Again it seems like a simple choice to put these adults front and center in the video, but it is not one that always happens. These videos are authentic portraits of the impact of the Hope Packs program at Elim and around the world, and they wouldn’t have been possible without the talents and stories of these four individuals.

The videos premiered last night at Elim’s Called to Serve event in Oak Forest. Elim supporters gathered for an experiential dinner where they could meet with and celebrate the work of Elim’s adults and partner ministries. The evening was a huge success, and the videos fit perfectly into an already robust presentation of Elim’s work. We wish Elim all the best as they continue to inspire support and gather supplies for Hope Packs. To learn more about Elim visit www.elimcs.org. To investigate Hope Packs or to get yourself involved by running a supply drive, visit http://www.elimcs.org/index.php/hope_packs/host_a_supply_drive