The New York Film Academy is pleased to announce that our high school camp alum Alec Orbach has been honored by the Obama Administration as a recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award (the Corporation for National & Community Service). Alec has taken the lessons he learned at NYFA’s camp and implemented these tools to make a worldwide difference.
In 2009, Alec Urbach, now 15 years old, founded an organization called Giving From The Ground Up, through which he creates and produces animated, educational health-care videos for children in third world countries, and sends medical and dental supplies to accompany these videos. There is not enough money for full time nurses or doctors in the communities the organization serves, so these videos provide a vital role in educating children in a fun, engaging way about healthcare fundamentals, and endowing the villages’ make-shift clinics with important basic medical supplies. Another purpose of Giving From The Ground Up is to create and produce documentaries about young people and the conditions under which they live in Ghana and other third world countries, to present to high school and college groups here in America for the purpose of promoting fundraising events to purchase needed medical and school supplies for the villages.
For more information on Alec’s foundation, visit here.
This is the letter that Alec received from President Obama!
Alec has been a part of the NYFA family for several years; he has taken multiple courses, and most recently completed the 4-week high school Broadcast Journalism camp (in June of 2010). Congratulations Alec, we are very proud of you.