Supercharge Your Bottom Line Through Disability Inclusion | Surpassing Sight

Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams

Dr. Kirk Adams, Managing Director of Innovative Impact LLC, hosted a webinar discussing disability inclusion and employment. He highlighted that only 35% of blind individuals are employed, compared to 70% of the general population. Lucas Behnken, producer of the documentary "Surpassing Sight," shared the film's goal to change perceptions of blind capabilities through the story of a blind team in the Race Across America. The film aims to catalyze social impact by connecting employers with training programs and tracking employment outcomes. The project includes private screenings, a red carpet premiere, and a long-term strategy to raise awareness and funds for employment opportunities for the blind.

Introduction and Overview of the Webinar

• Speaker 1 introduces the podcast, emphasizing its focus on disability rights, employment, and inclusion.
• Speaker 2, Dr. Kirk Adams, welcomes everyone to the fourth episode of his monthly live-streamed webinar series.
• Dr. Adams mentions the partnership with the documentary film "Surpassing Sight" and introduces its producer, Lucas Behnken.
• Lucas Behnken introduces himself and his production company, Sterling Light Productions, and provides a brief background on the film and its foundation.

Dr. Kirk Adams' Background and Employment Statistics for Blind Individuals

• Dr. Adams shares his personal story of being blind since childhood and his education at the Oregon State School for the Blind.
• He discusses the employment challenges faced by blind individuals, noting that only 35% are employed compared to 70% of the general population.
• Dr. Adams highlights the disparities in employment outcomes, including higher unemployment rates and lower income levels for blind individuals.
• He emphasizes the importance of meaningful employment in providing financial stability, dignity, and positive self-identity.

Success Stories and Personal Experiences of Blind Professionals

• Dr. Adams shares success stories of blind professionals who have achieved significant careers in large corporations.
• He recounts the story of a blind woman who overcame obstacles to become an executive in a telecom company.
• Another story involves a blind man who participated in freestyle bike tricks with his sighted peers, fostering a strong sense of self-efficacy.
• Dr. Adams discusses his professional career dedicated to creating opportunities for blind and disabled individuals to thrive in employment.

Dr. Adams' Professional Achievements and Leadership Roles

• Dr. Adams details his role as President and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind in Seattle, where he oversaw businesses employing blind and deaf-blind individuals.
• He highlights the success of these businesses, including aerospace manufacturing and advanced manufacturing for the U.S. Army.
• Dr. Adams shares his experience serving on the Board of Trustees for the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) and his leadership role at AFB.
• He recounts his meeting with Jack Chen, a blind Assistant General Counsel for Google, and their shared commitment to creating opportunities for blind individuals in the workforce.

The Race Across America Project and AFB's Involvement

• Dr. Adams describes the Race Across America project initiated by Jack Chen and Dan Berlin, involving blind professionals on tandem cycling teams.
• AFB sponsored the Race Across America team, marking a significant milestone in their efforts to change perceptions of blind capabilities.
• Dr. Adams shares his transition to a new role as a consultant and his partnership with Dan Berlin, leading to the Apex Program for training blind individuals in cybersecurity.
• The Apex Program has expanded to 16 states, with a target of training 400 blind individuals annually in cybersecurity.

Introduction of Lucas Behnken and the Surpassing Sight Film Project

• Lucas Behnken introduces himself and his background in creating social impact campaigns around documentary films.
• He explains his involvement in the Surpassing Sight project, which began with footage from the Race Across America.
• Lucas and his team, including director Ramon Fernandez, interviewed subjects and created the film to highlight the capabilities of blind professionals.
• The film includes a diverse team of blind and low-vision professionals, ensuring authenticity and impact.

The Film's Social Impact Campaign and Distribution Strategy

• Lucas emphasizes the importance of using the film as a tool to make long-term change and enhance lives.
• The film includes an audio description track, ensuring accessibility for blind viewers.
• Lucas and his team have been conducting private screenings to build advocates and gather feedback on the film's impact.
• The goal is to create a concierge service to connect blind professionals with companies and track their employment outcomes.

Lessons Learned from Previous Social Impact Campaigns

• Lucas shares insights from his work on the documentary "Molly," which focused on adoption and foster care.
• The campaign involved private screenings, partnerships with nonprofits, and a large theatrical release to raise awareness and funds.
• The campaign resulted in significant donations and increased visibility for the organization, highlighting the power of a well-structured social impact effort.
• Lucas emphasizes the importance of building a team dedicated to the social impact campaign to ensure long-term success.

Call to Action and Invitation to Get Involved

• Dr. Adams and Lucas invite viewers to get involved in the Surpassing Sight social impact initiative.
• They provide contact information for those interested in volunteering, donating, or collaborating on the project.
• Dr. Adams shares his email and LinkedIn information for further discussions.
• The webinar concludes with a call to action, encouraging viewers to check out the Surpassing Sight website and join the effort to change employment outcomes for blind individuals.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

disability inclusion, employment opportunities, blind professionals, Race Across America, social impact, documentary film, employment statistics, internal locus, meaningful employment, cybersecurity training, private screenings, social action campaign, employment disparities, film distribution, stakeholder connections

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Music.

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Welcome to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr Kirk Adams,

00:36

wonderful. Welcome everybody. This is Dr Kirk Adams, Managing Director of innovative impact LLC, welcome to my monthly live streamed webinar. Supercharge your bottom line through Disability Inclusion, I began this monthly series in February, so this is the fourth episode. It is being recorded so we can share with folks later. Every month, I partner with another ecosystem that shares my passion and focus on accelerating inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. This month, we're featuring a documentary film and social impact project called surpassing site, and the documentary films producer Lucas Behnken is with us today, Lucas, if you want to say hi and just a brief headline about who you are, and we'll dig deeper into your amazing background in a bit.

01:35

Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm Lucas Behnken and I'm a producer, and have a production company called Sterling light productions. And I was the producer and production company for this film titled surpassing site, which we have now established what is called surpassing site foundation to be the distribution campaign for the film,

01:57

fabulous. So a little background, I want to talk just a little bit about myself, a little bit about employment of people with disabilities, employment of people who are blind in particular, and then tell a very interesting story about how we all came to be here today. So again, I'm Dr Kirk Adams. I am a blind person. My retina is detached. When I was five years old in kindergarten, I attended a school for blind children in the state of Oregon. Oregon State School for the Blind first, second, third grade. Learned to read and write Braille, travel confidently with a white cane type on a typewriter, and was given some real gifts there. As I went to school with 120 other blind kids, I was given a strong internal locus of control, which meant I felt in my bones, as I left third grade and went to public school in fourth grade that I could be successful in whatever I chose to do with my life. I also was given the gift of lofty expectations from the school and my parents about what I could accomplish. And I was given skills. I was given, like I mentioned, Braille skills, key it was typing then, but keyboarding skills, skills to travel confidently and independently. And those are three of the main factors that lead to successful employment for blind people as we become adults, unfortunately, the employment outcomes for us are not even close to what they should be. Only 35% of us are working, compared to about 70% of the general population that are working age, that are that are in the workforce. So about half, if you look at the actual Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment rate people who are actively seeking employment, if you see the general population is 4% for people with disabilities, is going to be 8% so our outcomes are always half as good or twice as bad as the general population. As far as employment goes, for those of us who are employed, we're in a much narrower, narrower band of occupations than the general population, and over half of us that work are working for government or nonprofits, which are great places to work, but they definitely have caps on the level of income one can achieve As composed to other employment settings. So this persistent unemployment problem leads to things like poverty. A third of people with significant disabilities live in poverty. Our home ownership is 1/10 that of the general population, and leads to health disparities educational achievement. This disparities, all, all kinds of bad things. So I have devoted my professional career to creating opportunities for other people who are blind and have other disabilities to thrive in employment. There's lots of ways to tackle lots of problems. My My choice has been to focus on employment, because I believe that meaningful employment not only solves financial issues, but it also provides individuals with the experience of the dignity of work, the positive self identity that goes with meaningful work. So I have pursuit of creating those opportunities for people who are blind. I have earned a PhD in leadership and change my dissertation, which is called journeys through rough country as an ethnographic study of blind adults who are successfully employed in large corporations. And I interviewed blind people working at companies whose names we all know, Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, Chase, at&t, etc. And I found a couple of really interesting things, one that almost everyone shared that strong internal locus of control that I mentioned earlier, believing in their bones they could forge their own path, and they could, without exception, trace that to an experience, experience or set of experiences, that gave them That sense of their own mastery of their own destiny. Two examples, I like to use one woman who's been employed in a large telecom company as an executive for 45 years, recalled that shit when she was a young girl, 10 years old. She and her twin sister were sent to a sleepaway camp, a summer camp, and when it came time to do horseback riding, the counselors told this young blind girl that she was she wasn't allowed to ride the horses because it was too dangerous. And blind kids hear that a lot. You can't do this. You can't do that. Her sighted sister, however, was allowed to ride the horses. So that night, they slipped out of the cabin, went to the stable, and they got out two horses, and they rode together. And she this was so animated when she recalled that night, writing swiftly through the night with her twin sister side by side. And that gave her that sense that she could really do anything that she set her mind to in a very different setting. One of the people I interviewed, a very successful person with computer science degrees and law degrees, very responsible positions in tech, who's blind, recalled growing up in one of the boroughs in New York City, and falling in with a group of 1213, year old boys in the neighborhood who did freestyle bike tricks. They would ride their bikes and stand up on the seat, or stand up on the handlebars and jump over benches and do all kinds of tricks. And he was doing that with with his neighborhood crew as a blind person. And as I often tell Parents of Blind children's you can measure your success to the parent of a blind kid by how many, how many trips to the emergency room do you make? So I think in that case, that young gentleman had his parents in and out of the ER often, but he certainly grew up with that strong internal locus of control. So a couple other things I've done. I had the privilege of serving as president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind here in Seattle, and we employed, and they still do employ dozens and dozens of blind and deaf blind people, some with additional disabilities, and businesses that generate revenue and support the organization, some of the most interesting being aerospace manufacturing, 120 blind and DeafBlind machinists making parts For all the Boeing aircraft, computer numerically controlled advanced manufacturing, producing issue items for the United States Army, the entrenchment tool, the omnimo Hydration systems and a number of other very successful business enterprises. While serving in that capacity, I was invited to join the Board of Trustees for the American Foundation for the Blind AFB, which is the most iconic historic organization in the blindness field. It was Helen Keller's organization for 45 years, where she served as global brand ambassador, and when I. And my wife moved from Seattle to New York in May of 2016 so I could step into that leadership role at AFB. I had the opportunity to sit at Helen Keller's desk in the morning and play with her typewriter and read a page out of her Braille Bible, and get get tied right into that history and that impact that she had, and gain that inspiration to try to do the best I can to carry on that legacy of creating opportunities and being an advocate. In May of 2016 when I arrived New York, I got a telephone call from a gentleman named Jack Chen, and Jack said, I work about 10 blocks from you at Chelsea Market. I'm Assistant General Counsel for Google, and I'm blind, and I heard you came to AFB, and I want to welcome you to the city. So we met for breakfast and became friends and colleagues and developed a deep relationship and also a shared commitment to devoting our time, energy and resources to creating opportunities for people who are blind in the world of work. Several years, fast forward, I got another call from Jack saying, I'm working on a an amazing project. I have a business partner named Dan Berlin, who's also blind. Want to get on a call with the three of us and talk to you about this project. So Dan another worth another hour conversation. Very successful blind entrepreneur, was a chemist by training,

11:44

worked for a large

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pharma school, pharmaceutical company that we all know. When his vision got to the point where he could no longer perform the job duties that he was accustomed to, he chose to leave at employment. He purchased a small flavors company. He became our country's largest importer of vanilla. Sold that business has a nonprofit called Team C possibilities. He provides scholarships to blind college students. He organizes outdoor adventures. He's taken blind young people to run along the Great Wall of China to run trails in Peru of Machu Picchu, another Outstanding, outstanding blind individual. And Jack and Dan said that they wanted to undertake the most rigorous physical challenge that they could find and involve blind professionals in doing so to document it on film and use the documentary as a tool to change perceptions of employers around the capabilities of people who are blind to encourage blind people to pursue their dreams and ultimately to move the needle in those terrible statistics of blind employment that we talked about earlier, and they told me what we have chosen is called The Race Across America. I had never heard of it, but as they explained it, it's the longest single stage bicycle race in the world. Cycling teams start with their rear rear wheel in the Pacific Ocean in California, and they continuously ride as a team to Annapolis, Maryland, Atlantic Ocean. And Dan and Jack proposed putting together four tandem cycling teams, each with a blind professional on the back of the bike. That position is called the stoker, and a sighted person in front that person is called the pilot, and they wanted to put together all the logistics necessary to continuously HAVE THEIR TEAM CYCLE across across the nation. They wanted to document it. And then they had their ask, would the American Foundation for the Blind consider being a sponsor of our race team, and

14:25

coincidentally, as karma works,

14:29

AFB Centennial was approaching, we had put together a budget to promote the centennial, and one of Our line items was to sponsor a signature event. So being a good CEO, I did not say yes, but I said, I will put you in touch with our chief communications officer who owns that budget, and you can talk to her about your project, which they did, and the decision was. Made for AFB to sponsor the Race Across America, Team C to C as the signature sponsor sponsorship event for our centennial. So we're proudly the American Foundation for the Blind was proudly the first sponsor for Team C to C's Race Across America. Now I'm going to digress just a little bit, but it's still pertinent. When I made the decision to leave the American Foundation for the Blind and step into a new role as a consultant, in the summer of 2022 I had reached out to friends, colleagues to let them know that I was seeking fun, innovative, high impact projects that would accelerate inclusion of people who are blind in the workforce. And one of those people I reached out to, of course, was Dan Berlin. Shortly thereafter, you and his wife were on vacation. His wife went on a dive trip, and one of the women on the scuba diving trip, named Janice, turned out to be the co founder of a very successful cyber cyber security company called Nova coast. Nova coast was founded in Santa Barbara, California, about 30 years ago, they worked mostly with large global financial institutions. They're very entrepreneurial. They create business activities where they see need.

16:32

They had created a training program,

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virtual training program, to train people to get basic certifications on cybersecurity for entry level cybersecurity jobs, because they could not find enough people to hire, and they knew others in the industry could not find enough good people to hire, so they created a business unit around training. They moved their headquarters from Santa Barbara to Wichita, Kansas, and there's only one reason anyone would do that, that's taxes. They found themselves in Wichita. They connected with a blindness agency there called envision that I have done lots of great projects with in the past. And they were talking to them about employment and the fact that only 35% of us are working, and the fact that there are 750,000 open jobs in cybersecurity on any given day in our country. And envision asked, Have you thought about training and employing blind people in cybersecurity and novacoast? Honestly, as many, many employers would say, No, we've never thought. We've never thought about that never, never crossed our minds. Tell Tell us more. So envision and novakos partnered. They made the novakos training program accessible.

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They branded it the apex program,

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and set it up with vocational rehabilitation state agency in the state of Kansas, and they waited for the students to come, and the students did not come. So at the point where dan met a co founder of novacoas, they had had the program in place for several months were disappointed that they weren't having students register. It wasn't working. Dan suggested they contact me. So they contacted me, and fast forward again. I've partnered with the novacoas program, thanks to Dan Berlin, thanks to Jack Chen, thanks to Race Across America, and we have the program set up in 16 states now. There are 32 students in process going to be earning their network plus and security plus certifications. Our target is 400 blind people a year, going through the 10 work, virtual training, becoming certified and entering cyber, cyber security careers, so that that is an example of a successful employment program that's having, making an impact. And turning back now to the film project, and I'm going to let Lucas talk about his vision. He has a great track record in creating social impact campaigns and movements around documentary films he's been involved in. And the vision here is for the film to be a catalyst to bring together, resources, stakeholders, be a nexus of connections that will spawn dozens more Apex programs will will find programs that are working and help fund them that will facilitate sharing of knowledge, that will connect employers with training. Programs will connect Guide. Government, corporate, nonprofit and community stakeholders together in that shared effort to really, truly change the employment situation for people who are blind and have other disabilities. So I've just said a lot of words. I'm going to let Lucas take it from here and talk to you about the film, his vision, where we're at with the process of creating this really, truly innovative social impact effort. And then we will let you know how we can all connect one another. And then we'll see if anyone has questions or comments or thoughts, but for now, the talking stick goes to Lucas Behnken,

20:49

thank you so much, and wonderful to hear your story. And so just thrilled with our partnership and getting to work with you and be integrated into all that you've built over over many years. How many years now? 5045

21:13

and well,

21:14

I don't know. You can go back to first grade, I guess so,

21:18

over 55 from that first year when Mrs. Summers taught me to read Braille and convinced me that I could be and do whatever I wanted to be or to

21:28

that's where it starts, as as you point out. And I came to this project also through Dan Berlin, who had a financial advisor that was connected to a business partner of mine, and at that time, Dan had finished the race with Jack Chen, and they had filmed the footage, which Jack had a strong vision for, is to start to make this film, and make and film the race in order to highlight the story and continue to carry on the message that they had carried with the race. So the race itself was a call to action and highlighting the unemployment rate of the blind, and so they spoke about that during the making at their events, in the early promotion of the race itself, what they were racing for, and then along the way, they captured the entire race. And at the end of that, they had the footage, and they didn't have someone to complete and turn it into a film. And so Dan had reached out to my partner, and that partner reached out to me and asked me if I would talk to him about what to do with this footage and how to have it have impact. And so we spent a few months I was introduced to Jack through through that conversation around consulting, and I started to talk to them about my work, and I put a lot of focus and select the products that I participate in based on if, if I see a way to use the film as a tool to make true impact and true change and and long term change and enhance lives long term. And so I learned about this topic through them, sharing this with me, which was a really incredible experience, and to your point, Kirk, where you have these experiences of talking to organizations even about employing the blind or low vision that they had not heard of that I also was in that situation. I didn't understand or know much about it at all, and I was humbled and honored to join with them in putting this film together, turning this footage into a larger project. And what we came up with was I would put together a team to go back and interview all of the subjects that raced, all the crew members and family and friends of those that were blind, that raced and were championing this cause. And so I brought on a director named Ramon Fernandez, and him and a gentleman named Arturo, went around the country and filmed these interviews, and then we spent the next year and a half putting together the movie. And during that time, Dan and Jack were very involved in curating the Edit, because the purpose of the film was to make sure that we had this message deeply embedded in the story. And so they were very involved in that. We were very intentional about Brad. To sing what we preached. And we hired a wonderful composer named Stephen let's who is blind, and he has a couple of organizations, one called Able artists. And he brought on also blind musicians and vocalists to create the score. And we brought on a sound mixer, who was blind, and a sound designer, and then we were very focused on including an audio description track in the process of creating the film, because often with films, a film is finished and mixed and mastered and delivered, and then the distribution company is required to put on subtitles and put on an audio description track. But what that does is it makes it difficult for it to have focus or attention or be thought of as a part of the film, rather than an afterthought. And so we worked with the audio describer, a man named Joel Snyder, who we also interviewed in the film. So he's in it talking about audio description, and then he audio describes the film, and he would ask us to leave longer amount of time between certain areas so that he could describe what's going on in the film and introduce people in a different way, versus just having a subtitle come up with their name that you could not hear. And that was a integral part of how we put the film together, and we finished the film close to a year ago. And a big part of my company as well is that social action campaign, distribution strategy. And I really preach that independent filmmakers and documentarians, they put together budgets to complete a movie, but they're solely dependent on a distributor to distribute it, and that's not a negative thing in itself, but those distributors don't have their attention on the longevity of the campaign as much as they do making a large, impactful release. And so we we as Sterling light, really strive to focus on building a budget that matches the making of the film, to build the strategy around the release of this film, and so we've put together additional funds for funding the social action impact team that we put together based on each specific film, so a lot of distributors or production companies might have a marketing team or a social impact team within the company. I differ in that. I believe that gathering the people who are going to work on this film from that community and who care about that topic and that community, and so that's what we're presently building right now and over the past eight months, Jack and I and Dan for a first few months, and then Jack and I for the past five or six months, have been traveling the country, doing private screenings and building advocates, finding Our team members for the social action campaign and building funds for the strategic screening plan to build the momentum and build the awareness around what we're doing and what we're where we come to realize through doing these screenings, through talking with all of the organizations through Discovering, how do people react to the film, what does it cause them to believe and understand? And then, how do we curate the calls to action based on those responses? And the largest area that we've decided to tackle at the top level is being a white glove concierge service of sorts, to where individuals who see the film most most of the responses have been that they've been opened up into a whole new understanding of what the capabilities and possibilities are of those that are blind, specifically in high level positions in the workforce. And so we realized that often the organizations, as you described, like novacas, haven't heard of these positions being filled. By those that are blind, and then the the fact that you describe of how many people are unemployed, that are capable, that are college educated, prepared and ready, but no one knows they can do these things. And so we want to be a catch all for for providing the companies with the people, and connecting the people to the companies now that they've become aware. And the power of a film is that it is a massive marketing tool. You can hit the movie theaters, you can hit the screen platforms. You can hit the entire entertainment area, which we were also very focused on making this film. It's, it's an entertaining sports adventure film that highlights this cause. But it's, it's not just a fact driven documentary informing you of something. And so merging those two things together makes it

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an entertainment experience, and so when we release in a large platform and do a global release, we need to be prepared for the response that people have. I've found that in a lot of experiences, individuals will have a large film come out, and the in influx of interest happens, but there's no team there to take it on, and so you'll have a two people at a production company getting 1600 responses to every type of social media and and trying to find out how to get involved, and there's nowhere to take it. And if that happens for five to six weeks, it all dies out. And so the reason we would delay this release and build this slow process of putting in the staff in place, putting in the function in place of this concierge service of the people trained to do this. And then as we build the early phase of partners and and the interest in the campaign will be prepared when we go out to to truly make change and track it. That's another major gap that we've discovered. Is that the known percentage rates of unemployed is there, but we actually, or I haven't, discovered that the numbers are actually known or when people get hired, where? Where can we find that? And so we want to be a hub of starting to even backtrack and then track when individuals get hired, listing them and how long they stay employed, because that's a large part of the topic as well, is these individuals keeping and retaining jobs and lasting and building wealth and capacity, and so that's, that's the top level of our vision.

33:11

Lucas, I have a question for you. You, you said, so now we're in this private screening phase. You just did one in Atlanta on June 27 we'll have a screening for a small select Group here in Seattle. So if anyone on the call either live here or seeing the recording between now and June 27 if you would like to talk about coming to see the screening, please get in touch with me, or Lucas through LinkedIn, or our email addresses, which we will give you. And then, after the private screening, then comes 20 big red carpet premier Galo, wonderful events. When everything's in place, the funding is in place to put together the social impact team, the strategies can be implemented, etc, but right now, we're at the private screening phase. And you said part of the private screening is to gage how the viewers have experienced change in what they believe and understand. And you had also mentioned that before you were connected with Dan and Jack, that your level of understanding of the dynamics and issue issues around employment people are blind was was negligible. If that's a that's a right characterization. But Can, can you just talk a little bit about yourself. You've been working in this space now for a year. What? How? How have your beliefs and understanding changed?

34:50

So about my beliefs over the last few years working on this project,

34:54

just your your beliefs and understanding around employment of people who are blind capability. At ease, what, what, what you what were your beliefs and understanding before you got connected with Jack and Dan and Race Across America on the project and

35:13

how those have evolved?

35:14

Absolutely, yes, you know, I've always, and I say always, you know, as as far back as my my working life,

35:26

had had a very

35:32

positive view on the possibilities of anybody being able to do anything, and so that that core belief has stemmed through a lot of a lot of my work and my nonprofit work in Los Angeles and into Atlanta, I've, I've always been a champion for never assuming that I know much about the capabilities of someone, and then having witnessed, I guess, from early on, I feel like I'd always witnessed that somebody who didn't think they could do Something did something, or someone that others thought wasn't able, wasn't capable of doing something, did them, and somehow that stuck with me, and in my early years in Los Angeles, I formed a non profit that has now branched into training former incarcerated in filmmaking, and in that subject there, there's a core, you know, belief in in the culture that individuals who have been former incarcerated a are either criminals or not capable of of doing something because they were in jail. And so I remember going through that journey of of having to reshape individuals preconceived ideas about someone who might have served time, whether two years or 40 years, and who they are versus who people think they are. And went through that, that experience, and then I,

37:30

about 10 years ago, worked on a film

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titled Molly, where I I was also able to you, use this, this method of social action campaign with a documentary, and that that topic was adoption and foster care. And the gentleman in the film, Molly had rescued, and now has rescued over 18,000 children off of the streets and similar, individuals assumed that street kids aren't capable of things or or not smarter, not able or must have been there for something that they did. And what that film shows, and what Molly shows throughout his work of 30 years is that the kids that he rescued, the schools that they formed, became the most well respected and successful in grades that that were in the country. Their athletic teams became the number one in the country. They succeeded to going to the Olympics. All of these otherwise assumed individuals that could not do, I witnessed do. And so by the time that I came across Jack and Dan with this film. I think my belief in the possibilities was high and and my response to the situation was shocking and not not having realized this whole area of blindness and low vision was, was such a major topic. But I, I was, it was like, it was like, that experience where, like, Oh, of course this, this is a problem. And of course they can, individuals that are blind can do all of these positions that I just didn't think about, and so I was convinced quickly of the capabilities, and then mainly, I've just been amazed and and inspired to. So what I've found is it really inspires everyone to overcome whatever their considered adversity or considered disability is. I've found that that's been an experience that we've had with this film, is that most people relate it to being able to overcome and live with who you are, and it really reshapes the word of of disability. And it's that's a difficult but important topic to address, because some some individuals so called disabilities are obvious, and some aren't. And then those ones that we consider obvious are labeled as the ones with disabilities, when in fact, we all have them. All have things that that we have to master, that are different than the other things that other people have to master. And so I found this, this, I found this encouraging, that that it levels the playing field of what, what we consider capable or not capable of anything of any number of positions, jobs or just tasks in life.

41:26

And let's talk about Molly a little bit more as a model of a social impact campaign, and how it relates to what we're trying to do here with surpassing site. So you worked on an incredible documentary portraying one man's terrific work in Kenya, rescuing 18,000 kids from the street. Now that film could have been streaming on a streaming service. Lots of people could have watched it. Lots of people could have been moved, saying, that's incredible. Could have had a thought, how can I help? And nothing could have happened. However you structured it, in a way that lots of things did happen. And that's the intent here with surpassing site, is to structure this social impact effort so that lots of things happened as a result of people seeing the film. So if you could talk a little bit about how you what you put together, what happened in conjunction with the film being seen by people and what the impacts were, I think that'll help people understand what we're trying to achieve here with surpassing sight. Yes,

42:32

absolutely. Yeah, that that film, in a similar way, was a gentleman who had worked with this, this man for quite a while, and there had been a book written on him. And this man, John came to myself and my business partner Scott Hayes, and asked Scott if he would put together a documentary. And Scott and I partnered. Scott brought me on to produce this documentary on this gentleman named Molly. And John financed the documentary as a way to to instead of putting donor dollars directly towards the organization, he put donor dollars towards a film to be a way to share the message, and be a marketing tool to spread the word about what this man is doing. And we put the film together. We made the film, and it was about his whole life, of a 30 year journey of him being an orphan child to becoming very wealthy, and you know, one of the wealthiest gentlemen in the country, to realizing that he had forgotten his past and forgotten those that were on the streets like him, and decided to sell everything he owned to start rescuing children. And he rescued these children one at a time, and ended up turning his whole life into rescuing more children and building a place for them, and he's now built this entire eco village and sustainable home and model for taking care of others. And so we finished the film. And to your point, there was an opportunity to sell directly to a streamer and release it and have a decent marketing campaign, and we won a bunch of film festivals and took it around in in that way, but I really encouraged my my partners, to take the chance on finding a way to build a campaign with some other partners, and so I did some private screenings with a few people through my lawyer and a few other contacts and agents and managers, and did a private screening for a gentleman who was so moved by the. Film, and that he said, I want to take this film on and fund the social action campaign. And at the time, that was going to be a 500 grand commitment, and we would build a company and start planning this social action campaign and decide what it would be it, it ended up being $2 million towards this campaign, and we built a company called for good, and there was about 16 staff members, and bought a building, and worked out of this building for a year and a half on figuring out the best ways to make the most impact, the most change, and reach as many people as possible and around the cause of you know, for that film, when people finish the film, they were inspired to help a child, but we wanted To inspire people to be like Molly, not just only give directly to moly, because we knew that would occur, and that was low hanging fruit, in a way, and and so how do we enhance the reach of getting a message out that's about an Unknown gentleman in Kenya, which is not the most sought after type of project for the US distribution market. And so over that year and a half, we formed partnerships, we connected with musicians to write songs, some of the greatest songwriters in the world. We then secured what's called a Fathom event with AMC, which is a one night event. And we were intentional about going that route because to rally everyone on one or two or three nights in a row around an event that you want to communicate to them. That is an excellent route. And with the Fathom Events, you're allowed to curate the first five minutes where the trailer space is. You can put in your own content of highlighting other organizations. You can make your own videos and put that before and after. You can have Q and A's after the events. And so we we secured 1000 screens to do a three night event, which was their largest event at the time and still is having a three night event. And in order to determine how to fill these seats and reach people where they're at, we came up with the idea to partner with as many nonprofits and organizations in the United States that we could, and so with our team, we called every single one of them, and we partnered with 143 adoption and foster care agencies in the United States, and a lot of those had numerous branches. So, you know, there's quite a few 100 base camps of individuals and organizations that committed to not only bringing people to the theaters, but we worked with AMC to allow us to have a volunteer outside of the door of the theater, which is uncommon. It's not common for them to let filmmakers be in you know, have have that space, but they were for the cause. And you're always casting the vision for the cause when you're working with these these organizations, because they're very interested. There's just a lot of rules and regulations that you have to navigate, and so to provide that time to be able to do that is important. But we were able to get them to be allowed to have a table outside of every theater, so that in Boise, Idaho, when someone came out of the theater, they and felt led to help a child. They they were already moved by moly, and had a way to access and connect to Molly children's family and be connected to them and reach out to them. And we had the website embedded in the film and a call to action there. But then there was someone outside the door with their flyers and their current need. So someone says, I want to help a child. And they say, well, there are six children in city hall right now. If, if you want to get involved, here's our program. You can come to this class and talk about being a foster parent, or do you want to adopt? And that that connected 1000s of people to hundreds of organizations and caused 10s of 1000s of children to be adopted or fostered, or, you know, connected with parents, connected to kids that have aged out of foster care. And along with that, once we were done. With this theatrical we had an eight week study guide that these organizations had the DVD and the link to the film, and a study guide to have accessible in part of their programming of when someone was new to being interested in foster adoption, they showed them this film because it caused their their heart to be moved enough to take the next step and and see the possibilities of how much you can do. That's what that film did. And so, so that was, that was a major part of the impact campaign. And then we've continued to do events up until now. This was six years ago, and Molly is still a few weeks ago, toured 10 locations and screened the film and talked about his work. And we've continued to get updates from these organizations about the impact made. And to date, I would say it's around $40 million that has been donated to Molly children's family since the making the film available. And so what was considered a few $100,000 a year nonprofit is now close to $5 million a year. Nonprofit that's that consistently brings

51:32

resources to the organization for more kids to be impacted in in Kenya and then beyond. So that's a bit of the way that we strategize that, and to add on to that, two years after the premiere, and then we made it available on Amazon and all of the streaming services, and had it for rent and purchase. But about two years later, the same investor of the film wanted to do an update video. So we were engaged again, and we made a 20 minute update video. And my strategy with that video to release it, was releasing that along with a couple of dubbed language films. So we always had it in subtitles and other languages. But to do a dub, you hire an entire other cast to do the film in that language. So we released German and Spanish dubbed version along with this 20 minute update video, and the investors wanted to make it available for free, and so I partnered with 14 large influencers on Facebook, and we had built a very large Facebook account around 800,000 members, and so our plan was to stream live this 20 minute video and the film. But in Spanish, Spain and Mexico released the Spanish dub and in Germany, released the German and those 14 influencers on Facebook restrained our live stream on their feeds. And there's some back end ways you can do that. And those pages, some had 12 million followers, some had 16 million, some had 4 million. But that one stream, which I released over five time zones so that it would hit at a certain time across the world,

53:31

was viewed 255,000

53:33

times. So it's really the largest live stream on Facebook to ever have been accomplished. And that was and then all we were promoting is the release of the film on YouTube for free in 16 languages and two Dubs, and then links to Molly. And we then told all our partner organizations this is happening. And if you want to push any of your activities around what you're doing for your work, feel free. And so that was another angle that we did for continuing the long term social impact

54:09

so Lucas, as you mentioned, every documentary, every social impact campaign built around that documentary is is unique, flavored, flavored by the people who get involved. Those people get involved because they're passionate about a cause. So the surpassing site social impact Initiative is a sprout which we are tending and feeding, and we are looking for people who are interested in participating in small, medium or large ways. So if people on the live stream now are viewing the recording, would like to raise their hand and say, How can we help make the surpassing site and. Should have a truly transformational effort in changing the employment situation for people who are blind. How? How should they get in touch with you?

55:09

I'm available at Lucas at surpassing site.com and I formed a foundation so it's Jack at surpassing site.com and our foundation will be running this whole campaign, and there's a fund that's being raised to take the film around prior to distribution, and then Jack's larger vision is a 30 to 40 year plan to have a $70 million endowment over that long term effort to truly provide resources to all the organizations that do work in this space. And that's one note that I want to leave with, or at least say is that there is so much incredible work being done. And to your point, Kirk, you did so much at every organization you were with, you're still doing it and see success all of the time. We're just able to highlight that in a big way through a film. And that's what our big hope is, is, how do we highlight all of the all the work being done, and have a hub for people to come and see all the work being done? Because without something like this, it's it's not able to be seen.

56:25

Great if people want to get in touch with me. LinkedIn is a great way to do it. Or my email is Kirk Adams, 00, [e-mail], I will happily talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere, if it leads to greater opportunities for people are blind and have other disabilities to experience the dignity of meaningful employment. And let's watch the trailer, and then we'll see if anyone has any questions or comments. Well, in in in respect of time you want to see the trailer, email Lucas with a k, l, u, K, A, S, at surpassing site.com and let's see if there are any questions or comments from anyone who's with us. It was playing

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it, but it didn't have the audio. But at surpassing sitemovie.com is two different trailers, and there's the audio described version and the non audio described version just at surpassing site.com and that's our basic site, with just the trailers. And then we can send you the campaign vision deck. Should you have interest? Perfect.

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Any questions or comments from anyone who's been with us for the last hour, hearing none we'll thank you all for whoever was with us today, live whoever is viewing this recording, wherever you may be. And please do check out surpassing site and join us in changing the employment rate for people who are blind. And thanks Lucas for your time. Really appreciate it.

58:03

Thank you so much. Thank you for all that you're doing as well. Glad to be along for the ride, peace, onward and upward, onward and upward.

58:14

Thank you for listening to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at www.drkirkadams.com. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact. You.