Worldreader is a global children's literacy nonprofit that gets families reading through BookSmart, its free reading app for parents of children aged 0 to 5. Through partners like Safaricom in Kenya and the data-free Moya platform in South Africa, families can read together on the phones they already have. Its reading challenges, story collections and partnerships reach families on several continents with a very small team.
Put real families on camera. Worldreader needed true stories from the parents and children who use BookSmart, so it could build awareness, show impact to donors and its board, and promote its reading challenges across very different regions. All of it had to work for a small team that could not run its own productions around the world.
A year-long partnership with four productions, unlimited edits and bi-weekly strategy calls, produced by Nick Reis. We filmed in Nairobi and Kilifi, Kenya, with Worldreader's CEO and board, in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, and with four families in San Miguel, Lima, Peru. We hired vetted local crews in each country. From that footage we cut long-form family stories, a board-trip recap for Worldreader's board pre-reads, reading-challenge promos in three languages, partner reels, and a weekly series of Are You Happy street-interview collabs. Music and graphics stay consistent across regions so every piece reads as BookSmart.
Worldreader now has a library of real family stories it can use with donors, its board, partners and social audiences. Edits have gone straight into board pre-reads, and the team shares new pieces on its internal Slack so staff see the work too. The first Are You Happy collab reached about 10,000 views. Worldreader renewed for another 12 months with four more productions. And now the footage is being put to work for fundraising: “When you make the story about an individual, people care,” Erin said. “We're light years away from last fall when we started with you guys.”
Worldreader gets families reading through BookSmart, its free reading app for parents of young children. BookSmart reaches families in Kenya, South Africa, Latin America and beyond. But a year ago almost none of that work was on camera. “We had none of it captured before,” says Erin Williams, Worldreader's Senior Strategic Operations Officer.
The brief was simple and very human. “Year one was really like, we need human beings that are not AI, we need real stories from real people to drive awareness around BookSmart, and to demonstrate impact,” Erin told us. So we went to the families. We filmed with Worldreader's CEO and board in Nairobi and Kilifi, with families and partners in Johannesburg and Cape Town, and with four families in Lima, Peru, working with local crews in every country.
Every shoot fed two streams of content. One was the polished, donor-ready storytelling Worldreader uses with funders and its board. The other was fast, social-first content, including reading-challenge promos in English, Kiswahili and Spanish, and street-interview collabs on the Are You Happy channel. We matched the music to each region so the whole library still feels like one brand. “I think we've really kind of nailed the music, too, across different regions and themes,” Erin said. “And I think that's huge in helping our branding.”
One year in, the gap is closed. In Erin's words: “We're light years away from last fall when we started with you guys, so I really can't thank you enough... It's been huge to be able to have these stories to tell in a visual way.”
The people who commissioned this campaign, on camera and unscripted.
Screens from the feeds this work was made for.
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