Post-Production

By Morgan Feddes, '09

When she graduated from Whitworth in 2005 with a degree in theology, Erin McNamara never imagined that within four years she would be a member of the board of an organization.
Today, McNamara is a board member of Transitions Global (formerly Transitions Cambodia, Inc.), a nonprofit organization that helps survivors of sex trafficking transition back into normal lives.

"I feel a little like a fish out of water, but it's a good experience," McNamara says.

McNamara didn't hear about Transitions Global through a church. Instead, her first interaction with the company came as a result of her work in the film industry.

Discovering a day job
For a little over a year, Erin McNamara, '05, has worked as a production manager and coordinator at Big Shot Pictures, a film and video production company based in Portland, Ore. Big Shot specializes in commercials and has produced many well-known ad campaigns, including the ads for Bowflex and NutriSystem.

As a production manager and coordinator, McNamara says her primary job is organizing the production schedule. She schedules the film crews, the actors, and the filming locations.

"It involves a lot of multi-tasking and requires organizational skills," McNamara says. "When stuff goes wrong [during filming], I have to know what's going on because I'm the go-to person."

This is not McNamara's first experience in film production. While she was still attending Whitworth, she began working as a production assistant on a film set.

"It's the ground-level job, but it's a good way to get experience," she says.

McNamara spent her summers and school breaks working in film to continue expanding her aptitude in the field.

"I've worked on everything from commercials to feature films," she says.

McNamara says her experiences at Whitworth – particularly her involvement in the leadership studies program – gave her the expertise needed to be able to lead others. Even more valuable than that, she says, was the desire instilled in her at Whitworth to find a way to help others.

"It wasn't that Whitworth was necessarily the best school in the world," McNamara says. "It's very good, but those professors were trying to make me care. They made me realize that I'm not just a cookie-cutter Christian."

As she worked after graduation, McNamara searched for an organization that would provide a way for her to show her love of Christ to others. But for several years, no specific organization held any attraction for her.

That changed when she discovered Transitions Global.

Finding a cause
McNamara's interactions with Transitions Global began when the director of Big Shot Productions encouraged her to go out and look for her own projects to work on in her own time.

"I felt it would be a good idea to find a nonprofit" for a project, McNamara says.

At the time, McNamara's mother had recently seen a news story on Dateline about a family in Hillsboro, Ore., that had sold everything they owned to move to Cambodia to open a housing center for girls rescued from brothels there. Aware that her daughter was searching for a nonprofit project, she related the information to McNamara.

After searching for the organization's name on the Internet, McNamara called the number listed on the website. At that point, the company was so new that the number was an individual's cell phone number – a fact that initially made McNamara a little nervous, she says. However, one phone call took away any hesitations she might have had about the company.

"James [Pond, the owner of the cell phone and one of Transitions Global's founders] is very outgoing and easy to talk to," she says.

When she offered to create a video to highlight Transition Global's mission, the Ponds were very open to the idea. McNamara set to work, interviewing (in addition to her own father, also an experienced film director) James Pond, trauma specialist Wendy Freed, and Jaya Sry, the Cambodian director of Transitions Global.

"I would have loved to do something more artistic, but I had no budget," McNamara says. "I decided to let them tell the story."

When she was not working, McNamara spent time editing the interviews and combining them with footage from the Dateline special.

"It was challenging because I had no money and limited resources," McNamara says. "But I felt something was better than nothing."

The end result was a video just under 10 minutes long that explains what Transitions Global is doing to help trafficking victims adjust to life outside of the sex trade.

However, McNamara's involvement with Transitions Global did not end when the video was completed. Because of her work with the organization, she was asked to become a board member.

The board is trying to raise enough funds to help the organization survive, McNamara says. The Hedinger Family Foundation has offered Transitions Global $500,000 to build a new housing facility, but the organization must come up with funds necessary to maintain the facility.

As a fund-raiser, the group hosted a banquet in January that included speakers such as Wayne Havrelly and Judge Nan Waller. Havrelly is a news anchor at Portland's largest network, KGW. Waller is a family law judge who serves on several committees that address the juvenile world of crime. McNamara says having the support of people such as these helps Transitions Global a great deal.

In the end, McNamara says, the organization's survival – and her own involvement – is in God's hands.

"I hope I can help more in the future," she says. "But God is in control of that."
Click here to watch the video.

For more information on Transitions Global, visit www.transitionsglobal.org. 

Morgan Feddes is the student writer for the Whitworth Alumni Office as part of the McDonald Opportunity Scholars program. Born and raised on a farm near Bozeman, Mont., Feddes is currently a sophomore majoring in English and minoring in journalism. She hopes to become a television screenwriter after graduation.