Columbia’s Business Loop 70 has two organizations sitting across the street from each other that just found a good reason to walk over. Vidwest Studios, a nonprofit media center, and VAC Opportunity Campus, the city’s homeless-services hub, have launched a media-training program open to Opportunity Campus clients.
Starting in mid-September and running through the end of the year, the program gives Opportunity Campus clients a complimentary membership to Vidwest’s studio and equipment, plus about ten free workshops taught by two paid instructors. The goal is real media skills — camera work, editing, production — that could turn into paying work down the line, not just a way to pass the time.
Vidwest volunteer manager Elliot Cade said watching the Opportunity Campus go up next door made the partnership obvious: it’s “one way that Vidwest can impact the community and give back.”
Opportunity Campus shelter director Jessica McNear said distance is often what keeps people from services that could help them — a class or a program that’s a bus ride or a long walk away might as well not exist. With the two organizations sitting across the street from one another, that particular barrier disappears.
The workshops are funded by $3,000 reallocated from a City of Columbia Office of Cultural Affairs grant — part of a larger $10,000 award originally earmarked for workshops running January through June.
It’s a small program by budget, but a concrete one: free equipment, free instruction, and a media career path opened up for people who are, for the moment, without a permanent address. For a shelter used to measuring wins in small, practical steps, a media studio next door counts as one more.
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