Support SIFFY: Empower Youth Through Film

Want to join me in making a difference? I'm raising money to benefit The Skopelos International Film Festival for Youth (SIFFY) and any donation will help make an impact. Thanks in advance for your contribution to this cause that means so much to me.

In 2025, for the fourteenth year, SIFFY will have "Language" as its theme. Language is a system in which is a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release. We will teach appoximately 100 kids on all aspects of the subject. Then we will ask the children to create their own scenarios based on any aspect of language to create a film based on their ideas.

The donations for SIFFY go to The Skopelos Foundation for the Arts. We are a 501(c)(3) organization that supports the arts and community of Skopelos, Greece. We offer artist-in-residencies to artists from around the world. We also support the arts in Skopelos by working with children, painting murals in the schools and the organization of the largest initiative, the Skopelos International Film Festival for Youth (SIFFY), where in one week, underprivileged youth of Skopelos work with international filmmakers to create films based on a yearly theme.

This fundraiser will allow us to invite filmmakers from around the world to work with approximately one hundred children from Skopelos ages eight to eighteen. We have broken the costs down per child to give you an idea of the total expenses. We are asking for a minimum of $20,000 which would pay for approximately fifteen filmmakers to travel to Skopelos, their stay for eight nights and most of their food while on the island. If you break this down per child, the cost would be $250. So the sponsorship would be the following:

1 child - $250

2 children - $500

3 children - $750

4 children - $1,000

5 children - $1,250

SIFFY expenses are the following:

Boat tickets to and from the island: $2,500

Housing: $7,000

Food: $3,500

T-shirts: $2,500

Film submissions: $1,000

Website, Vimeo: $1,000

Supplies: $1,000

Equipment: $2,500

Total $20,000

You can make a very large difference for little money. And it is all tax deductible!