When I first announced #jmagwillforfree a couple of months ago, a couple of my reasons were not altruistic at all. Foremost, I needed to brush up and sharpen my skills shooting alone, in preparation for some out of the country shoots I was going to have. I’ve been babied with my team locally and I wanted to re-experience the challenges when I was starting out. “To go back to my roots” like I explained.

I suppose it was also a measure of my reach in social media. After all, nothing was sponsored in the posts but it caught like wildfire just the same. Big media picked it up and the response was nothing short of phenomenal. We had 7000 plus entires and it took a lot of time to go through each one.

Now here’s the magical thing about what happened. And I think it happened because I never really confined the “thing” to weddings alone. I became a magnet for a lot of stories which needed to be told, topics and subjects that could use the medium of video to find an audience.

More than couples wanting their weddings to be filmed, advocacies poured in which I may never have had the chance to know about if I didn’t post about “free”.

And somewhere along the way, more than the buzz generated, I became genuinely excited with the thought of creating something for the betterment of my fellow man (woman).

And with that, I’ll give you a rundown of the projects I will be doing for jmagwillworkforfree

1. In a small town in Leyte, students walk kilometers at a time, barefoot(!), back and forth just to go to school. Next week we will fly out and document their story to share to you in the hopes of raising enough funds to buy each and every student a pair of shoes.
2. I already met Nikko and April last week. They’re set to get married in December this year. April arrested me with prose in Filipino – which I have a soft spot for. Her words –

“Ang point ko lang naman po ay marahil marami sa atin ang naghahanap ng pag-ibig sa maling pananaw. Madalas naghahanap ng mala teleseryeng ala Mula sa Puso ang peg. Ang media nga naman. Ang natagpuan ko po kasing pag-ibig ay boring, nakakatamad subaybayan, di makatawag pansin, hindi romantic…pero totoo at sigurado.”

3. Now this third one – this is special – because she’s single with no immediate Prince Charming in sight. But the funny thing is, we might not even need a Prince for this story. Who says a person can’t be happy by herself? It’s intriguing. Dulce writes –

“It can be a story of fear of never ever getting married at all. It can be a story of hope, of trust in a Plan.I know that being married is NOT the one and only way to spend a meaningful
I know that.There are friends, family, community, yourself.
But still.
It would really be nice if someone knew how you wanted your coffee.”

I got three left so please stay tuned.

Thank you so much to everybody who shared the word and poured their heart out in their entries. All your stories are enriching and I am immensely grateful.