I arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, about 4 days before our Mandela event as the “Lone Ranger” from Circle Up Now, as the rest of my team was in Athens, Greece, and Los Angeles, California, creating the aerial artwork for Amnesty’s Global Day of Action. As Associate Producer, it was my responsibility to make sure everything was on track and to work with the schools and partner organizations on behalf of my team.



I had a lot of work to do in the first few days to prep, but I truly had mixed emotions about being there without the rest of my team. I was excited about experiencing South Africa, but I was a little nervous too — about being on my own in a place where a number of violent crimes had been recently highlighted in the news. This was the farthest I have ever been from the United States, and it was definitely the longest flight I have ever taken! It was winter in South Africa during our summer in the States, so I knew that weather would be dramatically different, but I was not sure what to anticipate otherwise.  Continue reading…

Throughout the night and morning our team gathered and viewed the images coming in from around the world. Some of the images were stunning, and we were incredibly pleased with the results of our partnership with Amnesty International.

Here are some of the newspaper articles that were published about our event in Greece.



After visiting the Acropolis one last time, a few of us drove to the beach and put our feet into the Mediterranean. We were supplied with a beautiful sunset as we later packed our bags and flew to South Africa early the next morning.

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This morning the weather was absolutely beautiful. The sky was clear and there was a breeze that made the 100-degree heat tolerable. We were informed by noon that the authorities were reached and we were granted the right to fly our helicopter within 1000 meters of the Acropolis in order to get our aerial photograph.



John finalized the sketch and began to lay out the image grid. I met with the media and worked out ground coverage while volunteers began to welcome participants and guide them to the waiting area.

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