The Shepherd Centre launches new TV campaign aimed at broadening awareness of its early intervention service for children who are deaf

New South Wales and ACT based children’s charity The Shepherd Centre has today launched a new TV campaign aimed at broadening awareness of the organisation’s life-changing early intervention service for children who are deaf.

‘They’ll Still’ is The Shepherd Centre’s first TVC in over a decade, showcasing the charity’s ongoing success in helping Australian children born deaf or partially deaf to learn to listen and speak, and achieve their full potential in life.

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Directed by Eddy Bell of 8com, the 30- and 60-second TVCs capture the unguarded, ‘real-life’ moments of several children who are deaf or partially deaf and teens who have graduated from The Shepherd Centre’s life-changing early intervention service. The vision highlights their talents in music and sport – something that their parents may not have thought was possible when they were born.

“Designing a framework for shooting that allowed the families of The Shepherd Centre to organically tell their stories was a really interesting process,” Bell said. “It meant our filmmaking had to be low impact, often shooting with natural light, rolling on unguarded moments and essentially letting the kids just be themselves in front of the camera.”

Jim Hungerford, CEO, The Shepherd Centre, said the TVC was a wonderful opportunity to visually highlight the successes of the children and their families that attend The Shepherd Centre: “It’s important for us to be able to communicate that we are here to help,” said Hungerford.

“Our clinical outcomes are excellent and the TVC showcases that for the vast majority of children with hearing loss that come to us, we are able to prepare them to start school and live their lives in the same way as their normal-hearing peers.”

“We were thrilled to be able to create a piece like this for such a worthy charity,” said 8com producer Lib Kelly.

“After meeting and talking to the children and their families on our shoot, I have an even greater respect for the work done by The Shepherd Centre and these amazing kids.”

‘They’ll Still’ will air across metro and regional NSW and ACT throughout March 2015, and will be supported by a donor-outreach and social media campaign.

The Shepherd Centre was founded in 1970 by Dr Bruce Shepherd AM and his late wife Annette and was the first Early Intervention agency in Australia to teach Auditory-Oral Therapy to hearing-impaired children.

Producer: Lib Kelly

Sound Mix: Sonar Music