Open The Door For Our Future Storytellers

Kia ora e te whānau. 

It's been so incredible for us to see the support for Day One Hāpai te Haeata over the past few weeks and especially over the past week. Donation upon donation. People donating multiple times. People digging really deep. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

We are so close now - with just five hours to go there is still a way to go yet. Please help us to get those donations in. Share, nudge, phone, offer massages and lawn mowing to get people to donate!

Day One is a very, very special initiative with so much integrity and heart. So many of the people donating know this because they've been involved in some way and it's incredibly heartening to see those people give back years later. We've seen donations from people who entered our film competition fifteen years ago. Some of them have gone on to film careers, some have gone on to other things entirely. But we all have something in common - we love a good screen story that matters and that never changes no matter how many years pass.

Pass the link on and get them to donate!

Mauri ora, 

Chris and Anna 

I'm a bit delirious with banging the drum but on we baaaang! Only one day to go. We are in the final stretch now! We have passed the 75% mark and we need to make as much noise as possible to get across the line by 10pm Friday night.

We are so grateful to all our donors - you legendary humans. Infinite heart emoji reacts on your names.

Please like and share our social posts to share the message! Exclamations for dayyyyz.

Woohoo! We are past the halfway mark - we are doing a push today to get it up so we can sail across the finish line on Friday!

Please share the campaign on socials, share a little clip talking about why you think people should support Day One, what impact it had on you!

Check out our socials for updates and inspo @dayone_nz

 We're partway through our Boosted campaign and the support has been something else. Among our donors are people who started out exactly where the young filmmakers we work with are now.

Natasha Bishop won the Day One Challenge. She now works at Wētā FX and is our highest donor of the campaign so far! Ryan Bradley came through the Challenge too and has since secured film funding through Proud Voices on Screen. Lee Li was a Challenge winner and went on to make a film with Day One Shorts. Mason Cade Packer was a regular winner before moving to work in the US film industry and has just received NZFC Catalyst funding. Hunter Williams was winning around the same time — he now runs a company in LA making documentaries for Google. Stella Reid was funded in the first year of Day One Shorts and is now mentoring the next generation while building her own career. Angela Cudd's production company Caravan Carpark Films came through Day One Shorts in its second year. She now runs the Aho Shorts programme and has mentored filmmakers through the Day One Shorts programme.

They didn't have to come back. They chose to.

If you've been thinking about giving, now's the time. Every contribution helps us keep doing this — for the next Natasha, the next Mason, the next Hunter.

If you've already donated, please share it, and make sure people are getting the link!