Meg Beasley

4/15/09

Features/Donnell

Word Count: 1220

Media for Change

Lights, camera, action that makes a difference; that is the desire of Echolite

Media. Through raw film, determination, passion, and countless hours of editing Brian

Hill and Bobby Neptune have admirably chosen to pursue a business endeavor of which

most people only dream.

This non-profit organization that came to fruition after more than four years of

planning has proactively set out to change the world with the click of a button. Based out

of Jacksonville, Fla., the boys of Echolite Media might be found filming documentaries

and building relationships in Mexico, Africa, or South America.

Before the traveling began, before the name for this company was created, and

before a mission statement was written, Echolite Media was a simple idea that was

running around in the heads of two small-town Arkansas boys.

The Vision

Brian Hill and Bobby Neptune met at a sports camp called Kanakuk in the

summer of 2005, and they became instant friends. The boys connected over the two

undeniable passions of loving impoverished people and technological media. They both

had a heart for the nations, and they were both extremely talented in the area of

photography, film, and graphic design.

As time continued on and their friendship grew stronger, Brian started to question

how they could make a connection between the desire to help hurting people and their

love for media.

“After I graduated college, I began to ask myself what it would take for me to

travel to remote areas of the world that were crying out in desperation and promote their

stories and struggles to those who can help them” Brian said.

One night in Fayetteville, Ark, sitting around the dinner table discussing

philosophy, Brian pitched this thought to his friend Bobby and with great enthusiasm

Bobby responded. The boys began their endeavor by brainstorming ideas of how they

could make media a resource and a reason to travel to areas of the world where people

were in need. After entertaining multiple slogans and mission statements, Bobby cleverly

derived the name of this un-established business.

“Echo is always a word I have used to describe the ripple effect that is created by

doing mission work” Bobby said. “When I was in school, my buddies and I used to set

out to make what we called ‘echos’ by doing something for someone who was in need of

some help.” From this notion, the name Echolite Media was birthed.

Due to their creative minds and proactive personalities, after they had created an

official name, they worked on designing a media site. Bobby and Brian bought the rights

to echolitemedia.com and created a website that had little to no explanation of what they

were intending to do with this name or the cause of their business.

“The first webpage we created was nothing more than a name, a cheesy logo, and

a few cool pictures,” Brian said. “At that point, we were just a couple of kids trying to

make a difference and we had no idea what that meant or what it looked like.”

The Beginning

The crucial step to making Echolite a reality was the promotion of their name and

their intentions. Bobby and Brian did everything they could to make themselves known

as “media men.” They took every media job that they were offered. They made videos for

camps, filmed people’s weddings, sold and showcased photography, and with every

project completed, Echolite Media grew more popular.

After enough money was made through random projects, Echolite created a

mission statement. According to echolitemedia.com the organization “exists in order to

provide low cost media solutions for foreign missionaries and mission based

organizations while aiming to raise the level of connectivity between the mission’s source

of support and the mission field.”

The mission statement solidified Echolite Media’s intentions and cause. The name

was becoming more and more popular, and because of a connection that Bobby had with

a ministry in Mexico, the boys got a phone call that caused their business to take flight.

“This organization, Christian Surfers, wanted Brian and I to come to Puerto

Escondido and take pictures for them and make their website look cool” Bobby said. “We

didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, but it was our first job, and they said

we could stay as long as we wanted. It was truly the opportunity we had been waiting for

and we could not pass it up.”

After staying for about a month, Echolite had completed their first project of

creating a website, filming a documentary, and taking pictures of a Christian organization

that needed recognition. Their work was good and they were proud.

The Business

Since the trip to Puerto Escondido, Mexico, Echolite Media has flourished. In

order to be funded and sponsored by businesses in the future, Echolite needed to become

an official non-profit organization.

Becoming a tax-exempt, tax-deductible non-profit organization was not easy.

Brian spent more than a month filing paperwork with the IRS to become a 501c3

charitable non-profit organization. The IRS granted tax-exemption to Echolite because it

was acknowledged as a company that relieved a global burden that would otherwise fall

into the hands of the government. The general idea behind a non-profit organization is a

business that does not aim to make profit apart from paying their workers and furthering

their mission. Echolite Media does just that.

Their website states that Echolite “exists in two different entities, both of which

have the same goal, but operate with slight distinctions. Echolite media is a domestic

production company that operates as a for-profit entity that provides services such as

video production, web design, audio recording, graphic design, photography services,

event production, and other miscellaneous media jobs in the United States.”

The other side of the business, and perhaps the more important side, is Echolite

missions. The missions entity of the business is a non-profit organization of which all of

Echolite’s foreign-based media projects fall under. It provides cost solutions to mission

fields that are in need of cutting-edge media, but may not be able to afford industry rate

prices.

“Missions is the heartbeat of our organization” Brian said. “Everything we do,

even under the banner of a for-profit production company, goes toward our ministry in

the mission field.” Every penny earned is spent on make the nations known through

media. Bobby Neptune and Brian Hill chose this lifestyle.

The Future

The small-town Arkansas boys are living faithfully from one day to the next, and

they have continued to see the fruits of their decision to follow their dream. Changing the

world one video at a time, Echolite Media exists to “reach an audience and reach a

culture.” They have been contacted by several organizations all over the world and asked

to create media projects of many different calibers.

They are currently in Paraguay, South America providing digital media solutions

for an orphanage called Che Roga that has been around for 25 years and has never had

any sort of media publication. Echolite Media has projects lined up in Peru, Ecuador, and

Zambia. The harder Bobby and Brian pursue their dream and their talents, the more

opportunities that fall in their laps.

“Doors are being opened for us,” Brian said. “And we are just walking through

them with smiles on our faces.”