About
The Power House Initiative is a nonprofit documentary and educational organization dedicated to providing select nonprofits with photography and filmmaking coverage to help them accomplish their missions. In the context of serving the nonprofit world, we run a free, semester-long, mentorship program for select students looking to develop their writing, photography and filmmaking capacities ahead of entering the workforce. We also hold educational workshops serving those working in the sciences who seek to develop their photography and communication skills so that they can document their research for a larger audience and/or public engagement.
After almost two decades working with newspapers and magazines with a focus on conservation projects, Tristan Spinski, a photojournalist and contributor to The New York Times, National Geographic, Audubon and many others, partnered with his wife, Sarah Spinski, a social worker, to create the Power House Initiative as a way to help vetted nonprofit organizations achieve more traction in the public sphere through quality documentary coverage.
Additionally, we find the entry point to developing professional level documentary skillsets, including reporting, photography and filmmaking, to be cost-prohibitive for many aspiring documentarians. These economic barriers can dissuade some of the most creative, intelligent and well-intentioned people from pursuing the craft of nonfiction storytelling, leaving the profession to a disproportionate amount of people, who pursue it because they can afford it. By offering free, semester-long mentorships each year, where students partner with a nonprofit organization and develop a portfolio of work through regular workshopping with a professional mentor, we bypass an element of structural gatekeeping and give access and opportunities to students and recent graduates who might otherwise not consider pursing a career in documentary work. Mentees learn from industry leaders and develop a professional-level documentary skill set, while a vetted selection of nonprofit organizations benefit from documentary content they can utilize for community outreach, awareness campaigns, fundraising and educating the public.
The importance and benefit of choosing a photojournalism approach in promoting an organization’s work is that truth resonates. Nonfiction content that accurately reflects the work, results, values, and intentions of a nonprofit’s endeavors validates and inspires. And that can change the world.
