HOME IS WHERE YOU FIND IT screens in Berlin at the Globian DocFest and is chosen for the Manhattan Short Film Festival, the New Orleans Film Festival and the South African Film Festival.

HOME IS WHERE YOU FIND IT wins first place Directorial Discovery Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and best Documentary Short at DocuWest. Congratulations to Alcides and the many people who made the film possible.

HOME IS WHERE YOU FIND IT premieres at SilverDocs and Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York with Alcides Soares, our young director from Mozambique, in attendance with both his mentors. He is poetic and inspiring.

The BYkids gala benefit - hosted by TODAY show anchor, Natalie Morales - is a resounding success and raises over $55,000 toward the third BYkids film to be done in Colombia by a displaced young girl. 200 guests see the Mozambique film and enjoy a festive and global evening in lower Manhattan. Photos at www.bykids.org.

BYkids Film Mentor, Dirk Simon, returns to India to continue helping Namgyal, the exiled King of Tibet, tell his incredible story. Namgyal narrates MY COUNTRY IS TIBET while they are together and final production begins.

New Board Chair and Film Mentor Neal Baer arranges to have Alcides Soares spend three weeks studying English before his voice-over work in the Henry Mancini Sound Studio at NBC/Universal in Los Angeles. 18-year-old Alcides, the star filmmaker of BYkids: MOZAMBIQUE, will narrate his own 27-minute film. Upon completion of the voice-over and final touches in the editing room, the film will start the film festival circuit.

The BYkids Junior Committee, led by 18-year-old Committee Chair Sophie Bressler, begins planning for the second BYkids annual benefit to be held at the Scholastic Auditorium in Soho, NYC on May 16th. The festive celebration will be the venue for the premiere of BYkids: Mozambique by 18-year-old Alcides Soares of Maputo, Mozambique.

Top web designers from Razorfish chose BYkids as the nonprofit venture to feature in an “Experiencing Design” course taught to undergraduates at MIT. BYkids Founder and Executive Director, Holly Carter, travels to MIT to present the BYkids story as a real-time case study and works with the students on new design ideas for BYkids web portals. Nadya Direkova of Razorfish reflects, “Working with a ‘client’ is a very important experience for a designer, especially working for a meaningful cause such as BYkids; this was a great learning experience for the students! Thank you for coming in person, for presenting your cause with an open mind and passion.”

BYkids receives its first major foundation grant for $101,000 from the Ford Foundation. A significant gesture of confidence from this prestigious foundation, the Ford Foundation’s generous commitment to BYkids will bring meaningful institutional support to near- and mid-range development strategies.

BYkids: MOZAMBIQUE (the first film being done by 16-year-old Alcides Soares, who was orphaned by AIDS last year) starts editing through the generosity of NBC/Universal. The editor, Michael Schweitzer, won the best editing award last year at Sundance for the film, Nanking. Film Mentor, Neal Baer, has arranged for Alcides to come to L.A. in August to do an intensive English program so he can narrate his own film. He will also work closely with the editor in the editing room. 

Sophie Bressler, a Chappaqua 17-year-old with a passion for BYkids, organizes an amazing fundraiser on May 10 that raises over $50,000. Held at the Times Center in Manhattan, Ford Models donate their time to model fashions from leading designers including Milly, Nili Lotan and Keiko. Mrz Smith performs, as does Morley, who movingly sings with a young friend from South Africa who was orphaned by AIDS. They perform after the Mozambique trailer is shown. Sophie will chair the 2009 Benefit and a newly formed Junior Board of Directors - Kids Supporting Kids. See photos of the May 10 Benefit »

BYkids makes history at the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences/NY, where BYkids presents its program to a group of Academy members. Our new Board Chair and Film Mentor, Neal Baer, brings the cast of Law and Order: SVU. Film Mentor, Dirk Simon, is there and the exiled King of Tibet connects by speaker phone for a rare, inside view of how this nation and it’s exiled leaders are dealing with life.

The Women’s International Film and Television Showcase (December 4-7, 2008 in Hollywood) supports BYkids with some of the proceeds from their upcoming event. “BYkids is a brilliant idea and embraces our ethos that the determination of an individual woman to think, see and do things differently can make a difference,” says WIFTS founder, Elspeth Tavares.

Award-winning filmmaker, Dirk Simon, has been in Dharamsala, India mentoring the 16-year-old, exiled King of Tibet in the art of filmmaking. Namgyal Wangchuk, is making a film about his life. With Tibetan news on the front pages, this is a rare and intimate view.

Namgyal Wangchuk, the descendant of the Greatest King in Tibetan History, Songtsen Gampo, was born in Indian exile and has never seen the country of his forefathers. The weight of keeping a 1,400-year-old lineage alive rests on his shoulders and “it’s simply not safe for him to go,” explains his mother. Even before riots broke out in Lhasa’s streets, in order to get a visa for China and Tibet, he would have to sign a paper that identifies him as Chinese - giving up his Tibetan identity. “And that is impossible!” he says.

BYkids is named a semifinalist in the 2008 Echoing Green fellowship competition out of 1,500 applications.

Through BYkids, Alcides Soares finds his 13-year-old brother with whom he lost all contact ten years ago when their parents divorced. A BYkids camera is sent back to Mozambique so that Alcides can film their reunion – where he tells his brother about the loss of both of their parents to AIDS.

BYkids wins three major foundation grants totaling $45,000. Additional grass roots funding enables the second BYkids film – the exiled King of Tibet – a story of perseverance in the face of oppression. The 16-year-old Namgyal Wangchuk Trichen Lhagyari, the only living descendent of the first Dharma King of Tibet (617-698 AD), begins filming in February 2008 under the mentorship of award-winning filmmaker Dirk Simon.

Peter Scarlet, Executive Director of the Tribeca Film Festival, agrees to premiere final films in the festival to a large and committed New York audience of 250,000 people.

Teens For BYkids, a youth-organized BYkids development program, is launched. High school junior Sophie Bressler initiates planning for a fundraising designer fashion show to be held on May 10, 2008, at the newly opened Times Center in NYC. Seventeen-year-old Ben Laflamme begins designing a BYkids shirt to be sold at his high school.

Board member Alan Murray, Executive Editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, hosts a fundraiser for 40 BYkids supporters. At the event, BYkids Founder and Executive Director Holly Carter announces that Neal Baer has the support of NBC Universal to make the first BYkids film into a full-length feature documentary. “There is so much here, it will make an incredible film,” says Neal.

Neal Baer (Executive Producer of Law & Order: SVU) and Chris Zalla (2007 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner) leave for Mozambique to teach 16-year-old Alcides Soares the art of filmmaking. Shooting 37 hours of footage, Alcides chronicles his inspiring story - echoed by so many youth in his country - of life after losing both parents to AIDS. Actors Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni purchased the camera and sound equipment for this project. You can see the trailer at www.BYkids.org.

Actor and director, Campbell Scott agrees to be a Film Mentor in our second year. He says, “BYkids is a powerful and poignant idea. Film has always shown the capacity to be an important social, political and emotional tool - maybe never more so than when it is placed in the hands of the world’s youth, guided by some of our greatest documentarians. This is a formula that can only benefit everyone involved - the kids, their countries, the filmmakers, and most significantly, the audience.”

BYkids hosted a celebrity-studded cocktail party to introduce its first film project happening this August in Mozambique. Film mentors Neal Baer, Executive Director of Law & Order: SVU, and Chris Zalla, whose film Padre Nuestro won this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize, presented the upcoming Mozambique project. Fifty guests, including Gloria Reuben and Tonya Lewis Lee, gathered at The Thom Bar at 60 Thompson Street in New York to celebrate and support the initiative.

Alan Murray is assistant managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, author of the paper’s weekly Business column, and regular contributor to CNBC. He brings his passion for public policy and journalism to his post. “As a journalist, I’ve always believed well-told stories have the power to not only enlighten, but change the world. BYkids is an effort to harness that power.”

Dr. Neal Baer, Executive Director of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, joins the BYkids Board and agrees to serve as a Film Mentor in Mozambique this August.

The Canada-based Virginia Parker Foundation generously becomes the first foundation funder in support of international filmmaking.

With the guidance of Cole Wilbur, former President of the Packard Foundation, the Packard Foundation will help find compelling stories around the world.

As an institutional partner, UNICEF offers their worldwide network to find children’s stories and will provide in-country logistical support for each of the film projects. “The BYkids vision of sending an American film master for one month to help a child make a documentary film about his/her world will go a long way in promoting global understanding,” says Stephen Cassidy, Division of Communication, UNICEF.