Colombia Production Company Helps Charitable Foundations Join Forces

A Mission

Since our Colombian production company serendipitously arrived on these shores a decade ago, this country has been good to us. Firstly, Colombia’s remarkable pool of top-tier talent has given WhereNext the chance to work with an inspiring array of videographers, editors, writers, and content creators. The Colombian team that we have assembled over the years has become a surrogate family in our adopted homeland.

Secondly, being located in Colombia has allowed us to offer our global clients the chance to film in a stunningly diverse and cost-efficient destination. In many cases, we have introduced Colombia as a filming destination to clients who may otherwise never have considered coming here to shoot. The chance to continually surprise our clients with the wonders of Colombia has been one of our hallmarks as a storytelling agency.

One of our missions as a Colombian production company is to be good actors in our point of origin. We want to be able to give something positive back to the country that has given us so much since we first pedaled here way back when WhereNext was just a dream sketched out on an old napkin.

FUN Esteban Chaves

We aligned ourselves with two like-minded NGOs, which share our values and passions. The first is FUN Esteban Chaves, founded by its namesake, the Colombian Grand Tour cyclist. Since WhereNext has such a long and personal history with cycling, aligning ourselves with Esteban's foundation was a no-brainer. They work with children and young people through the twin pillars of sport and medicine and offer alternatives to kids who might otherwise see no way out of the difficult situations into which they were born.

---

Read About How Our Storytelling Agency Created “Esteban Chaves: Behind the Smile”

---

Colombian Civil Air Patrol

The second NGO is the Colombian Civil Air Patrol (Patrulla Aerea Civil Colombiana or PAC). The PAC provides medical, surgical, humanitarian, and emergency medical care to Colombian towns that are inaccessible by road. Many of their patients have been waiting for surgeries for years; some have never seen a doctor before. We have seen firsthand the inequalities in rural Colombia during our years of filming in remote regions, so the PAC's life-saving work truly resonated with us. Over the years, we have produced a series of pro-bono videos to help them with their fundraising efforts, including a new series focused on their urgent medical missions during the current pandemic.

An Opportunity to Join Forces

Thanks to Johanny Stiven Borray Rojas, we finally had the opportunity to build a bridge between these two foundations for the first time.

Johanny is an 11-year-old boy from Florencia, in the Colombian department of Caquetá. He has a cerebral paralysis that has given him severe difficulty moving his legs. His mother had contacted FUN Esteban Chaves for their support, and they arranged for him to have reconstructive surgery on his legs in a specialist orthopaedic hospital in Bogota.

Johanny Stiven Borray Rojas arriving in Bogota with his mother and PAC pilot Alvaro Sanchez

However, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Johanny was unable to return to the Colombian capital for a vital follow-up procedure to remove his casts. Our storytelling agency connected FUN Chaves with the PAC, and they flew a special medical mission to Florencia to transport Johanny and his mother to Bogota and back, so he could get the care he needed. PAC pilot Alvaro Sanchez undertook the mission. It was also Johanny's first time flying in an airplane in his life.

Giving Back

Now Johanny's casts are off, and he's looking forward to a better future, thanks to these two remarkable foundations that it is our pleasure to support. As part of our commitment to bringing FUN Chaves and the PAC together, we edited a pro-bono video telling this moving story (you can watch it at the top of the page), using footage provided by both foundations. We were delighted to continue to support the invaluable work undertaken by both of these organizations.

You can find out more about the work that our Colombian production has done with both FUN Esteban Chaves and the PAC on our blog.

---

Read More About the Colombian Civil Air Patrol: Saving Lives in Times of Crisis

---

Johanny’s surgery was successful and he’s now back home in Florencia

---

Learn More About Our Colombian Production Company

---