Magic At Home – New income model for our students (teachers, volunteers and friends) And how YOU can help

We are living in strange times, cities have slowed down, almost to a stand still. We have had to stop most of our activities, specially the classes in favour of trying to flatten the curve in this global effort to mitigate the strain on our health systems around the globe.

The neighborhoods where our classes are held are some of the most vulnerable (economically speaking) to the recession brought on by this invisible enemy. This is true for all of our Education Chapters all over the world: India, South Africa, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Brazil and Colombia. Our student’s families live on day to day income, most of them are informal workers so they don’t have a steady income, less so in this troubled time.

With this in mind, we got to thinking and with some volunteers and teachers of our program in Bogotá, Colombia we developed a system to do LIVE 30 minute interactive magic performances that involve some kids (those who have access to a smart device, we help some get internet access) so that they can perform and gain income to share with their families. We are using a local digital money system (Daviplata or Nequi) that’s available in low end phones with no internet access.

This method can be easily replicated, here is what we did. We created a web page (using weebly), that let’s clients pay with credit card, bank accounts, and other mediums (using mercadopago a latin american version of paypal), once their payment is processed then they are redirected to a scheduling system (using calendly) where they select the date and time of their show, and by email they receive a unique link for a Google Hangouts Meet (thanks to our Google Nonprofits) session.

Our kids installed Google Hangouts Meet on their phones, or some got a computer lent to them and access it through Google Chrome. This way we can have a magic live show with our clients (that can be connected from different places) and do a live magic show with multiple performers, all from home.

This is a promo piece for the service:

Old piece:

New piece:

We have had more than 30 clients, all of them rating us 9.8 out of 10. The experience is a good alternative for this quarantine time at home, especially for families who are overwhelmed with homeschool + remote work.

UPDATE: September 1st We have done near to 80 shows, creating an income for our students and teachers of almost USD $2000

We wanted to share this model if it’s useful for our fellow performers please replicate, it’s easy enough, and almost free, the only cost is a small transaction fee from the payment processor, which in this time by the contingency in latin america has dropped all it’s fees for a month.

IF YOU ARE A MAGICIAN and would like to help us get this service to where you are, please get in contact with Carlos at carlos@magicianswithoutborders.com

If YOU WANT to be a part of our battle against this economic recession for the families of our at-risk youth, please consider supporting our Magic COVID-19 Support Fund that will provide our students with a data plan so that they can be connected at home and start working with this model.