Reflection Films has been fortunate to work with a variety of clients in the higher education space, including two community colleges: MassBay Community College and North Shore Community College.
For the latter, we were asked to produce two 15-second animations that highlight the value of a community college education from the perspective of a traditional student and a student who attends a bit later in their career. We needed to keep the content punchy and short to meet the specifications of pre-roll videos for a local movie theater campaign and for social media.
I had so many takeaways from this project but one of them was how community colleges provide key access to education, relationship-building with faculty and other students, and resources that many people couldn’t afford in other college and university settings.
Nearly 70% of North Shore Community College students are struggling with food and/or housing insecurity. Specifically, 33% of students surveyed said they sometimes go without food, and 20% said they do not have permanent homes, higher ratings than seen nationally.
North Shore Community College is not alone. In a recent study of hunger on college campuses, 56% of Bunker Hill Community College students indicated that they were moderately food insecure.
And this was the situation pre-COVID-19, so you can imagine how much more severe the crisis is now both from the perspective of students but also from the perspective of community college funding insecurity.
See this Globe article on the impact of the 2020 crises on community college students.
When we were invited to work on the animated videos for North Shore Community College, I didn’t realize how much I would come to learn about and admire what the community college system is achieving in Massachusetts with limited resources.