Making a difference can be embedded into every action we make, in business and in our personal lives. This is the common thread among the most inspiring stories of social impact today.
I recently shared a story about a woman who used her love of fashion to launch a boutique that provides clothing and dignity to survivors of sex trafficking. Before that, I shared a story about how Mastercard is using their long-standing leadership in the payments industry to help refugees.
Now, meet Lauren White.
White is a Dayton, Ohio, native and the co-founder of Indigo Life Media. Alongside her husband, Andrew, she and her team of filmmakers are using their gifts in videography to share untold stories of hope and recovery.
Passion for Community
White says her passion for giving back started in college when she had the opportunity to use her skills in marketing and public relations to help nonprofits. Using these same skills at Indigo Life today, White says she's passionate about her community and wants "to elevate the awareness and attitude about the good happening in Dayton."
Through projects like the Dayton Music Video to a new project called I AM, a video series following five women with weight struggles on their journey to spiritual, emotional and physical wellness, there's a tangible sense of celebration in the videos Indigo Life shares about their hometown.
"We believe that awareness is an important means to connecting citizens to work together to create a strong community," she says.
And although White and her team celebrate the good in the community, national media attention has largely left this out of the Dayton narrative.
The community has been gaining a reputation as the epicenter of the opioid epidemic, with one of the highest overdose rates of any city in the country. Yet, while addiction and overdose are a problem nationally and locally, White says this narrative lacks one theme – hope.
A Personal Connection
As media messages continued to highlight the problem of addiction, White says it hit home. Familiar with addiction through her brother's experiences in and out of recovery, she shared it can be a lonely place for people affected by it.
"I don’t think we realized how many other families were facing addiction until a couple of years ago when Dayton started to get this media attention," she says.
So as personal experience fused with professional expertise, White grew passionate about contributing her gifts to the recovery movement – fueled by love for her family and her community.
Joining forces with local filmmakers who had been impacted by addiction, she and her team have now committed to creating 26 videos over the course of a year to highlight hope and recovery in Dayton, the other side of the story often untold by mainstream media.
Greater In Numbers
White and her team got right what many social entrepreneurs often get wrong – sometimes it's better to collaborate, not compete.
White knew she could create content, but she knew she needed a platform if these stories were going to make a difference and set the record straight about Dayton.
That's when she met Ryan Hampton and learned about the Voices Project.
"Everything about the Voices Project aligned with our goals, so I reached out to see if we could partner," she says. "We wanted to maximize our impact, and partnering with an existing campaign with a great following was a no-brainer."
The partnership proved to be a success, with Indigo Life's videos already reaching more than 2.5 million people since the collaboration started in December 2017, says Hampton, author and national recovery advocate.
"When the media was highlighting the problem, Lauren pointed her camera at a solution. Now, people are starting to look at Dayton differently," Hampton says. "People like Lauren have become experts in the recovery movement simply by giving the experts a voice and a platform."
Hampton reflects on what White said to him in one of their first interactions: "I don't know what to do, but what I do know is I can make videos," White said. "So I'm going to jump in and figure it out along the way."
So she did.
This article is part of a year-long series highlighting community changemakers. Follow my page for articles about local heroes making a difference and follow me on twitter (@tori_utley) to join the conversation.
