CrowdSource for Life is a live staged storytelling show featuring non-directed kidney donors.  Each living donor will tell a story about the decision, experience and affect of donating a kidney, most of which went to complete strangers.  This rare content will be recorded live for the documentary feature film Abundant.  

Our Goals

CrowdSource for Life, a live storytelling show held at a historic 100+ year old theater in Dallas, Texas, features true, first-person stories by living kidney donors.  With professionally developed stories, expert staging and performance and heightened aesthetics, the CrowdSource for Life show will create ideal content for Abundant, a documentary feature film about abundance and giving.  Abundant is targeted for mainstream viewership, bringing the stories (and facts) about living kidney donation to a mainstream audience.

The CrowdSource for Life Story

In 2020, Maitri River Productions held an open audition for non-directed kidney donors to tell their story in a live staged storytelling show, CrowdSource for Life.  More than 70 NDDs from more than 17 states and three countries sent in audition stories, hoping for a place in a cast of storytellers who will change our country’s understanding of living kidney donation.  Now, after a thorough casting process, CrowdSource for Life features many varied experiences on the extreme altruism of living kidney donation.  Each story approaches the decision and action of living kidney donation with a unique voice and varying outcomes.  Together, these NDD storytellers present a new way to begin the conversation about living kidney donation, through abundant thoughts and actions. 

Why Storytelling?

First-person storytelling is the most fundamental way people connect.  Storytellers know, by sharing their experiences and perspectives, listeners can relate to their experience and understand fundamentally that they are not alone.  When it comes to kidney transplant and donation, social mediums, like Facebook, make telling or portraying personal stories easy, which is why so many living kidney donors share a common story that starts by seeing someone’s need for a kidney on Facebook.  Storytelling’s powerful force for connection is at the heart of our efforts to expand national awareness of the benefits of living kidney donation.  That is why we are staging CrowdSource for Life, to create the most personal, easily accessible content on living kidney donation for the feature film Abundant.