Prize money pay for a fish farm in Honduras
By B.C. Manion
As the video opens, 12-year-old Sean Carr is playing the grand piano in his family’s lakeside living room in Lutz.
As the seventh-grader’s graceful hands strike the keys, 13-year-old Kathryn Fontana and her younger sister, Sarah sing a song about love and kindness, peace and justice.
As the video continues, the girls’ sweet voices and the piano music serve as a backdrop, while viewers see kids arranging shoes in the Carr family’s driveway for a shoe drive to help villagers in Cusuna, Honduras.
As the images roll on, viewers see Sean boarding an airplane for the first leg of the journey that ultimately will take him by bus over primitive roads to the shacks and humble homes where the people of Cusuna live.
The video shows scenes of the young man making his way about Cusuna — carrying a young girl, praying with villagers, posing for photographs with local boys and washing a small girl’s feet before fitting her with a pair of blue thongs.
The video, produced by Tami Carr – who is Sean’s mom – won first place in a competition sponsored by Friends and Heroes, a company that produces DVDs of animated Bible stories for kids.
The $15,500 prize money was awarded to the Carr family’s church, Bridgeway Church, which now meets at the New Tampa YMCA. The church expects to move soon into its new Wesley Chapel home.
The Carrs found out about the video competition in an email from Friends and Heroes after buying some of the company’s DVDs for Sean’s 6-year-old sister, Olivia, at a home schooling conference in Orlando.
They decided to enter the contest.
“We had to either just take the song that had already been recorded and make a new video to it, or rewrite the song with the old video, or you could do both,” Sean said.
“We did both,’ he said, noting they rewrote one of the song’s verses to match the video they produced.
Sean’s voice and keyboard teacher, Andrew Hoy, professionally recorded the music and Sean’s mom created the video, blending together the sound with still photographs and film clips of Sean, the singers and scenes from Sean’s home, Tampa International Airport and Cusuna.
At one point, it wasn’t clear that Sean and his mom would be able to make the trip to Cusuna, but then everything came together and they were able to go.
“God really planned this out perfectly,” he said.
And, since they were able to go, they decided at the last minute to conduct a shoe drive for the people of Cusuna.
“In Cusuna, Honduras, everyone is poverty-stricken. Most of them have one pair of clothes and no shoes,” Sean said. “So, their feet are very calloused and flat.
“It was really late notice, so we didn’t expect much,” he said, but they wound up collecting 800 pounds of shoes, which they distributed in Cusuna.
Once they made the video, they posted it on YouTube, for the competition.
“There were 13 different submissions, anywhere from professionals to people like us,” said Sean’s dad, Ray Carr.
The prize of $15,500 was exactly the cost to complete a fish farm the church is building for the village, according to the Friends and Heroes’ website.
When they won the contest, the family had a choice. It could donate the $15,500, or keep half of that amount, Ray Carr said.
Sean said he supported using the money to help the people of Cusuna.
“Look where I live. The size of that bathroom is where eight people live over there. I don’t need anything else. They do,” he said.
Sean said he believes he was called to help the people of Cusuna.
“My aunt suffered from cancer and she died from it when I was 9 or 10,” he said. “So, I have a sense of compassion for people that really need help.”
Before building the fish farm in Cusuna, Sean’s family will build its own fish farm as a prototype. Once it has been operating for six months or so, they will replicate the model in Cusuna, Ray Carr said.
To see the video, go http://www.friendsandheroes.com/us and click on the item titled “Meet a real-life hero!”
