What you’ll hear in this episode:

• What the Nobelity Project is
• Combining film and non-profit
• What drives them forward

On this installment of Great Society, we were joined by Turk and Christy Pipkin of The Nobelity Project. Founded in 2005 The Nobelity Project is based in Austin, Texas, and addresses issues of global education. Filmmakers by trade, Turk and Christy shifted their focus from commercial projects to documentaries engaging with Nobel Laureates and other global leaders exploring potential solutions to the challenges facing us all. Now taking direct action in partnership with communities in Kenya, Honduras, and the U.S. we serve over 15,000 students annually.

Christy is full time in non-profit with The Nobelity Project as the executive director; Turk still has other projects but commits a great deal of time as the creative director of the organization. Their film backgrounds definitely do not go to waste in the non-profit space. They’ve made around 100 short films bringing attention to a variety of topics as well as three feature documentaries that premiered at South by Southwest.

What drives them forward is seeing the change that is instilled by their work. To hear more about why they do what they do, what work they’re doing, and how they’re making a change, tune into the tenth installment of Great Society. If you want to hear more from Turk Pipkin, you can click here to listen to his episode of the podcast Masters & Founders.

Great Society is a founding_media podcast created in partnership with Constance Dykhuizen.

Host: Constance Dykhuizen

Guests: Turk and Christy Pipkin

Transcript:

this is a founding media podcast if or or hi everyone welcome to great society a podcast about people who are working elevate the voices of others I’m your host Constance thank yous and my guest today are my friends filmmakers and world influencers as I think I think I’m making it a thing stricken Christy Pipkin founders of the nobility project we talked about how important it is that they keep going back to their projects and Turks next film on migration and how they view their legacy here’s my conversation with Turkish Christy

hi everyone welcome to great society I’m your host Constance thank yous and I’m here with my friends world changers filmmakers social entrepreneurs Turkey Christy Pickens hi guys hello how you doing good things thank you for being here always a pleasure to see you I wanted to start today with you guys have really storied careers and backgrounds Turk as a comic actor Chrissy filmmaker what originally dropped drew you to nonprofit social enterprise social impact work well I think we’ve we’ve always done nonprofit work and but for many years we were raising we’re helping to raise money for other organizations and we promote Christy produce I wrote the pharmacy broadcast for a long time when we did a lot of both locally and nationally that kind of work and the Jeff different trust we found an ability project we started making our phone ability and and we had a we had all these Nobel laureates who were like Desmond Tutu and Steve Weinberg here in Austin and many others giving us their insights and and to the world in their time and what started as of a film for profit we soon realize we really needed to be for a non profit and so we’ve grown from there into being an ability pressure being an education non profit that we still make films and but we build schools and we we do what we call bridging gaps in education but essentially we just sort of amplified what we were already doing

when did you decide to make the transition to making this like your full time or I know you have several other other projects like the majority of what you do yeah I’m actually a full timer at the nobility project Turk still keeps other work as the creative director of the organization he keeps the creative engine going the ideas perking the new projects and I work on making those things into reality and so ten years ago or so I think we had really had a long slate of potential projects and we decided we could really I met fully insulin became exacted director at that point Kim I’m so I’ve been to some of your events and your your gala every year is a huge hit here in Austin I’ve seen you get money out of people like I’ve never seen people get money on people really good at running the staging and seeing how did you kind of get people to believe in your vision like as you said you’re part of a kind of activist community like lots of people involved different things how do you get people to buy into your specific vision well one thing it helps because we’re filmmakers meet are most of the people that support our work at one level or another I’ve seen one of them we made three feature documentaries about global issues and we’ve also made I don’t Rev lost count we’re probably a hundred short films about specific issues are about specific projects we’ve done so if somebody’s involved in our work I’m also a photographer so there are millionaires tens of thousands of photos and hours and hours and hours of video of the of the completed work so yes No and they they see the working another works down there also it it’s inspiring to see this work and that’s the thing is if whether we intend to film the work we do in Austin for instance with students here as much as we do same Kenny R. and Honduras or something but when you see that how much these kids and and and the schools were we work a lot of having new classrooms or library or whatever does it inspired you to want to be part of it I think one of the advantages of filmmaking and visual documentation is that it becomes quite personal so the people who are not able to go see the work feel like they are in integral to the work by their donations are by their presence or whatever gifts they can give

how he chosen projects you have I know just following you on social media you have about mobile and rotan you have built schools in Kenya you do stuff here locally in Austin how do you choose what you do we have we have some processes in place that some criteria that need to be met there’s always a community commitment we work closely with communities in Kenya to make sure that we’re filling a real need not one that we think is is the next step but the one that we agree together takes their community from a to B. there’s always are used to be the cash on hand we really try not to approve projects that we then have to go race month funds for because it’s it’s also often a false promise when for communities when the nonprofit comes into us I will do this and then they’re not able to achieve their financial goals and we need personal relationship on the other hand we know someone there who’s on our team or on fully committed to the way that we do the work and will document and send us that proof of the pudding as it goes along stop

the kind of makes me think of something so I got the privilege of traveling with you guys to Kenya a few years ago and it was so fun it was fun we got to go to schools we had tons of performances and songs and things directed at us which is amazing but how how do you also gracefully say no because I feel like when you’re in this space and you guys have such a high profile like how do you say no to people who ask for something smaller for something huge like build me a school like how do you do that well enough this it’s easier to say no to a small I think it but smaller instance would be well for instance we have how many kids do we have about adrenaline right currently about ten thirty five when the division almost fifty kids in our program and yes we do have to say no that’s that’s as far as we go on this particular but small in that case would be okay this is top scoring off a top scoring boy top scoring girlfriend who graduated from one of the high schools where we work and they have called made a great high enough to qualify for government support to go to university but it doesn’t cover the cost of going to university so and most of them come from families that don’t have much in the way of cash flow a little bit of cash goes a long way as a ground to get them to college but that small and you and but it knows a constant because there’s there’s dozens and dozens and dozens of other kids every year that that are great too and but they yes is you know the if we’re gonna prove a project I mean the thing is because we have the processes because she’s talking about we’ve been to school they’ve said well we we need a library you know you we and you guys are the US and then the community raise money and did the US and then you guys did something and then maybe the county came and built something it’s been going back and forth but what we need left as a library but we also want to build a junior college and you’re saying let’s see if we can raise some money for a library so we start looking for library money when we have it by then we’ve met we’ve got a plan we’ve got a location we’ve got a a B. Q. a bid on what it costs so at the time we approve it where were later literally ready to start construction the next day and so that helps too because someone comes along and says I want to fund the library for my moms you know sixtieth birthday or something like that the fact that it could actually be built in a matter of months and and they could see the video of the kids in the library is pretty cool yeah

I think I think I know well enough to know that the reason you do this is to see transformation in the lives of the students they are working for what what has that done like what is making a high school done for that community what is like one student story or that community what has your work allowed students to do an achieve on their own yeah there’s so many individual stories one of our original students what’s a teaching assistant at me here during her during her degree when she got a degree in education and it’s now just been hired by another of the high schools that we’ve helped open anything who needed extra teachers so there’s not just our relationships and networking for our work you know the first generation of our work but but now that spreading out and so the the principles that we’re working with we’re looking to those particular college grads to see if they can incorporate them in into their staff’s budget which is great because of it if a teacher comes you know your student she’s a student at the high school and then a teaching assistant and now teaching in that area to another high school but if you’re in that area you already that’s a teacher now a young teacher who has relationships and his family there it’s not somebody’s going to be uprooted and go halfway across the country and and a lot of the first teaching positions in Kenya tend to be really remote areas and challenging for for somebody young to suddenly go out in the desert dental school and they become inspirations to the current students team you can really give they can connect the dots okay this is actually a financial benefit and professional opportunity for me to to score higher work harder yeah I like that you also have like I think you had set in place for like some of the top achieving students would get like a computer that I wanted to promise anything but a computer that they would get the two top scoring kids all five high schools get a laptop and are considered for what we call the jumpstart scholarships and tuition grant the goes toward their tuition over the course of their degree plan sometimes it’s two three or four years depending on what they’re doing next and so that’s that’s incentive program is in place in each of those high schools the lower grades in the high schools the top scoring a boy and girl get a bicycle and if they’ve already won one the year before they get a tablet so all the kids as we say there we have this experience that really all boats rise that as everyone works toward these incentives opportunities that that we see the scores just coming up not just for the top few percent for everybody for the whole school street

how often your go to Kenya I mean in the year I’m what I’ve cut back the most the most of garland and that’s been quite a quite a few years ago I have the most I’ve got a six times in a year which is really a lot and that’s a lot of flying obviously M. it’s a lot of driving like I went with you on a trip yes we were in the car for the African days like it the size of Texas and we have projects that are would be spread out basically over the whole size of our state a concentrated in in what would be sort of the Austin area of Kenya but it is a lot of it only accessible by car on pretty substandard roads it takes wow so are the other three times this year Christine Weiss only once last year but we’re in the car you leave you know you’d leave in the morning early get up and have a good breakfast because you might not see luncheon and you and you’re you know you’re basically out driving around schools all day long from from from morning till just about dark and you’re really ready to get back and have a cocktail what is the sundowner we get go home talk about today so with all those miles logged all those trips what have you what if you maybe learn that you didn’t expect to are there any things that didn’t go so well yeah one trip yeah sure there’s always those moments when you’re like okay what am I what am I doing here but they they resolved I’ve had more of those moments outside of Kenya you know any moments or because if you look at the film star one piece of time was the second of those three features what we shot twenty seven countries certain you know any moments that I have that are like your which people think it’s going to be your scary overseas moment none of us have ever come in Kenya are in Honduras which we think I was really dangerous country right now I actually I feel more safe and can you know that I do on eight six street party thirty six street in Austin where I don’t actually feel safe at all so I always tell people that in comparison but we’ve had to you know we’ve we’ve been really super surprisingly fortunate in the projects going well and and and I don’t know sometimes intuition maybe has come into that but there was a project we decline to participate down and a few years ago that the other partner they wanted us to be and not be part of it proceeded to us in one of those it just failed and we’ve never had one like that knock knock on wood like surface here about yet how do we avoid that I don’t know when we’ve built in yeah I think we worked at about forty five schools known him and we I think that’s goes back to the partnerships and now we’re working with friends yeah the strength of the people you work with any kind of depend on it feels like you’ve you’ve chosen good people to get the work done and that’s huge and we’ve always said that it’s really not charity its partnership and that the people who were working with have a have a deep investment in seeing it succeed right if their kids are like in their community yeah you know and what we can talk too much about austenitic dimension but will be on the road and I was invited to go to Roatan must be tied to go see if I could figure out some way to improve situations in the schools on Roatan island which is in the Honduras beautiful island off the coast founder Ehsan and in other public schools then there’s really not a lot of input into the public school system but when we were down there we discovered learners one library on the island but it’s in the you know in a spot where ninety nine point nine percent of the kids on Allen never get to it so but we always the obvious solution others not to but we’ll see and which carry thousands of books to go to every public school in the island the kids love to read and reading as I think we what we see makes the biggest long term difference for these kids challenge most the kids in a place like that especially it’s a bilingual Spanish English island just like Kenya’s bilingual trilingual really because the the kids in Kenya are speaking Russian and Saudi leader Chris Whaley but they also tribal language they speak at home M. reading is the thing that really makes a difference and so the book will be also taken books to the kids in the mobile mobiles also carry them through the library partnered better teachers to go into classrooms on the but what will zero the teacher comes off of a mobile and goes and takes over a class and the teacher in that class watches a better trained teacher teaching learns how to be a better teacher so but it really comes back down to reading skills and a lot of cases and we have that when you get to high school you’ll excel yeah the literacy part is key for it actually exercising understanding and exercising your rights you can’t actually participate in in in that part is very hard to stand up for the other inalienable rights one of the many reasons I look up to you all’s I think to your really you continue to be a bridge between kind of your world in the world that you’re in here with with the communities that you work and and I’ve always been gracious enough to take me and to educate me on things going on how do you how do kind of do that delicate balance of being here in the states you know film filmmaking industry actors celebrities that you all have kind of as part of your world but then going into ring that work is it challenging is is there any dissonance or I don’t know I think people tend to just drop a lot of that when they get off that particular path when people are people and heart so the warmth to these kids who are who are really you know I I I bristle at the word needy because their their cultures in their communities are so rich and give us so much that what they what they are is poor which is one of those problems that’s really incredible yeah and more of a matter of justice in a matter of like deserving date and there’s a plan you know and they’re not that uncommon problems I mean there’s a lot of people to live and ran hard poverty in this country as well as we all know and and when we’ve all been to Appalachian together on a program that you work with and but it’s been every parts of the country there’s a lot of people that struggle and it’s all just relative degrees but you know we focus on education because it tested is the ultimate sort of long term solution to all the problems we were looking at when we started with nobility whether was environment or poverty or social justice served or anything else that education is the only kind of common common link and educations come a long ways in Kenya and a lot of the a lot of the rest of the world in those years when when when we first started there was can you didn’t have primary school wasn’t free and nor was it required in the millennium development goals stated the primary had to be you know compulsory and free and can you know like a lot of other countries adopted them and pulled it off now they didn’t have enough money to build new classrooms was just some her week where we came in but now we’ve got the SDGS or sustainable to sustainable development goals and high school thanks in part to Malala lobbying high school now not two years as they were talking about making a four years of high school is now compulsory globally in every country in the world is doing their best to get there than out all their bedding but Kenya has now made high school free so we’ve gone from there being really no high schools in areas were working ten album well there’s five we we’ve we work with really strongly for those we pretty much built from the ground up but there’s just a lot more kids in high school in Kenya and we started unlike by maybe if I don’t have the hard numbers but I would venture it’s probably close to ten X. M. and it can be as good grown and changed and we’re we’re doing our best to work our way out of a job because we can’t work in every community in Kenya so we have X. number of partners and let’s finish all of the schools and see what and then see what those kids can do right one of my favorite travel memories is when y’all took me to the mount Kenya animal orphanage I got to play with the cheetah that was the highlight of my life I have a cheat a selfie in which I am way far away from it you know but that’s fine tell me about your work with animal conservation and why you why you still care and why you chase butterflies and and go visit the last white rhino and things like that and you should see Turkey’s about slightly better frustrates me it all depends on how how how brave I am the conservation work really is a filmmaking effort we’re telling stories that we feel need to be shared and targeting Turkey has a new phone in production that we hope will hit about a high school viewer really well received we don’t generally but that age is ready is really poised to make some decisions about their own lives and their lifestyles and I think if we can convince support just and the environmental and understanding of of this book well if we but let me take over there that’s a good thing towards the film while he took over and did say that the a lot of the environmental filmmaking started with programs with partners like the mountain animal orphanage or world we’d recently made two films for them about the mountain bongo breeding program about my life because I was uniforms and kind of reddish striped a second largest antelope on the world and there’s less than a hundred left in the wild and the only breeding population and in Africa is at mount Kenya animal orphanage and there’s now about so I think about seventy eight bongos there and so we we made up we made a short film for them to support their efforts to expand that program me am we one of those we did years ago the doctor Gladys you know and the girl a doctor in Uganda at Bwindi impenetrable forest and and her organization was able to use that film at the great apes imposing around the world to raise money to build and grow grow a clinic so we we put a little bit of effort in the film and they did the big work and we’re able to turn it on to them the fundraising they needed that might be the monarchs and the film I did for birdlife international about flamingos and and East Africa ended up being the core of this new film about migrations which includes monarch butterflies North America that Pacific gray whales which migrate from the lagoons of Baja Mexico to the arctic and back and the Great Migration wildebeest and zebras and everybody knows so well from East Africa from the Serengeti and the Mara and also the flamingos but they they’re really a great story to tell because these animals cover really long distances and insects animals from a really long distances and along the way there if there is climate change affecting them others pesticides or there’s lots of of habitat or you know mining in the ocean whatever it is then that it it’s a way to look at a larger ecosystem they’re all really visible animals for every monarch butterfly there’s ten thousand other insects that we don’t see that are affected by a lot of the same factors inner basically ag policy we look at human impact and trying to think of ourselves as a species that needs to live with in in those guidelines of what’s sustainable and hopefully we’ll see some young people with that phone with that message I am our young motivated at all by legacy like is that something that you think about is that part of what led you to to do this is like to have a big mark on the world or do you think about that at all I don’t I don’t know do you I think you know what I think it probably because she’s trying to talk but I I will say that we don’t work we do there’s a couple of cancer legacy the but where somebody else take over the ability project on and continue the work I’m not I’m not so sure because of the work we do is made possible by sort of a combination of unique skill sets and Christy was already a film and television producer and already a good administrator and executive and had you know work for Willie Nelson worked with Harry Anderson to work at all on award shows in LA and I was already a writer and filmmaker and producer and and could do a little bit of work on camera and had done some acting work and you put all those things together and I’m a builder and I built a couple of houses on my own so I don’t do the physical building but I’d I’d oversee a lot of building and Kenny others that it helps that I have a background in architecture and building and it would be hard to replace all that now the legacy of what happens with all these kids and how it changes the world to you know you have no idea I mean I want Chris to talk about that but there all the time kids come up to us for adults come up to us and that I am they’ll say something about I saw your film when I was in school and I was ten years ago and then I went on to become a conservationist and you just hear the stories you have no idea the impact you have on the world we just do what you believe in and and live your life the way you believe for your life should be lived and ideally that leads to a good world hello what do you think and I hope we do have a couple of kids but I also am a product of of the family that really worked in social justice areas and in some ways I feel like that’s informing me almost like I’m now carrying out their legacy and the books the Gandhi quote that we’re all walking in the footsteps of those who come before us but laying the path for those who are following it like that and so regardless if it’s if it’s art you know direct work districts said the ripples hopefully we’ll have some resonance you know through through this generation of you know we work with fifteen thousand kids a year in Kenya even if it’s a light touch even if they’ve never seen us even if it’s not about us hopefully it’s not about them you know that they have an understanding of a bigger world that they don’t have to just stay within the confines of of what’s been handed out to them as as a as they move forward I love that I just think they are great no because I think so many people do you think about legacy or trying to create it in very specific ways but I see I was having an impact in so many different kind of arenas or fields and so I really look up to offer that thank you what’s next what’s next for you guys what I go back to Kenya some point from a scouting we have two projects this year in Kenya that rather than going back to locations year after year and adding a project over the course of ten years we’re taking that ten years of development and doing it in one enter a command both got to visit those campuses last month and the workers began and the work is progressing and quickly actually the communities and they’re doing their part and everybody’s pretty excited we just had them kind of a revelation that disk love these kids really can’t wait you know they’re they need these services thing particularly preschools particularly sanitation facilities particularly kitchens there’s some aspects to school that impact not just their studies but their whole well being in the think the statistics show about early childhood development if a kid can go into first grade ready they have much higher achievement later in life if they get to eat solid food once a day which some of these kids this the meal at school is the the best meal they get they’ll have better cognitive ability at age ten so we’re really trying to focus these key this key interventions practically for these these schools that are close to schools Canadian winding other call they’re both quite remote in their unit you met Mike who drives us a lot of time Sir when we went to Kenya you do the first time I went my job was just Mike and and Mike burn our sinks were straight in Kenya sorcery I’ve been on much worse roads with bike I thought but he was convinced it was the worst road in Kenya and when you get there and it’s a really rural area it’s a very thin soil is pretty dry that everyone grows onions because the soils about six inches thick and onions grown top of the soil but they’re too far from the road and Market Street you know it costs as much to get the onions to the market and they’re just the other community of a really really hard working farmers and when their kids obviously M. there’s no one else gonna go up there and and in fact most of the schools in the Aberdares and and can never rebound there’s there’s we’re just now beginning to see a couple of other people are willing to come in and partner at the schools and which is great but if those two no one else is going to go and and and I don’t know did I not want to drive up there every year for ten years while we open one classroom at a time I’m not sure about the to go in and build all new class they have a few new questions so to build all the new questions they need to rebuild some of the older ones to put in a library new girls and boys toilets and and and in doing a year is gonna be really transformational and it might take a few years to for to see that impact on those kids but the communities are real excited so they’re like what can we do it’s you know it’s not like can you do something else for us it’s like okay you’re doing a lot tell us how we can be part of it this last question is one that I ask everybody how do you think about define success for yourself it was nobility or with with your projects that you have I think took said earlier would like to work ourselves out of a job that would that would be one measure I also think when we go back to the community when were a return visitor we we are welcomed with such warmth and such we feel part of their you know family may be overstating it but certainly part of the fabric of the community and I have for me if I could hold on to that and really leave that mortgage back into this community that would be successful I’m right I’m working on it I’ll I’ll here’s a different marker I think Christie might like this one but there was one high school we we will work another one we started building from the ground up working with the community it was a primary school like me he got it that way Celeste but the campus and half we need a ninth grade and then so we’ve we’ve worked that community built pretty much the whole the whole school in the first year or two and we came back as the school was coming up but the kids it often or like didn’t seem very excited to see us and they just they did they just weren’t that excited about school and I don’t know what it was and then something flipped about three years ago and we are back on wow that was a really good visit the staff was fantastic the teachers are great and the kids were really enthusiastic about school and every year when I go back it seems more so this year in particular AMG to me that’s the mark of successes whether whether we go to the school in it and you just look at the kids and say is this working or is it not working and you have to do that over and over all year long as its decks long time to get all schools but well thanks for being willing to do that thanks for going back and being consistent and allowing us on Austin to be connected to those communities

thank you where they said you Christy when we got it you came back yeah and it’s not common I think I think people go when they visit a school on these these safari trips or whatever but the opportunity to go back is unusual and they know when you come back caribou tena thank you very much for being here today thank you thanks so much my guess Turkey Christy Pipkin to follow their work with nobility project you can go to nobility dot org or find them on Instagram and Twitter at mobility project we’ll put links in the show notes the great society team includes me process take use and producer Maria Gossett an audio engineer Jake Wallace thank you to everyone it sounding your for your support thanks for listening