The History of Handclasp

The Early Days…

1971-1989 – The work of Handclasp International (HCI) started in 1971 and was led by founders, Maury and Lois Henrich, and primarily related to sending relief supplies to Ghana, India, Bangladesh, Uganda, Nigeria, Mexico, Kenya, Zambia, Pakistan, Philippines, Tonga, Peru, Grenada and Ethiopia. Handclasp International was founded in 1971 as a California 501(c)3 educational and charitable non-profit. During this period over 40 containers of hospital supplies, medicine and vegetable seeds were sent to provide relief to needy people in those countries. Estimates of medical supply value top the tens of-million-dollar level and many lives were saved as a result. The founders were not just administrators and traveled at their own expense to medical clinics in Baja California. They traveled to Zambia to visit a hospital that was the main recipient of the Africa Relief Fund (a project that attracted specific funds for this hospital). Innovations like the suitcase medical delivery system allowed smaller shipments to be hand carried to needy areas. During the 1976 Guatemala earthquake, HCI packed special relief supplies for overnight delivery on the Douglas DC-3 airplane. 10,000 pounds at 200 miles per hour for 2158 miles making at least one stop for fuel – probably in Mexico. Shipments to India, Zambia (Africa Relief Fund) and South East Asia topped $1,000,000 in 1981 alone.

Between 1971 and 1989, Maury and Lois Henrich worked faithfully to help doctors and nurses all over the world with medicine and medical supplies worth millions of dollars. During that time, the slogan was “Helping the Hands that Heal“. Also, during this period media training and prosocial production was initiated in 1984.

1984-5– Training in Bangalore with India Communications Institute (20 students) and Methodist Youth (40 students). Production of two major films in Tamil, “Crowned and Crucified” and “The Pearl”. The Pearl won the Golden Halo Award from the 1000 member Southern California Motion Picture Council for “Outstanding Contribution to the Entertainment Industry and Award of Special Merit.” Writing and production of a live action traditional folk drama in the Villapatu format. Hundreds of Indians came a watch it and a cassette with produced which sold hundreds of copies. No video was available in 1984 and some stills are included below. This traditional drama attracted the attention of the state TV committee and the were willing to air it if was recorded on video! Alas, no money! Today we would have filmed it on our smartphone! We all left India end of June.Spent time in Switzerland eating chocolate, stopped in England and returned to California. In August 1984 Dan Henrich conducted a Literacy workshop in Lagos, Nigeria and in November traveled to Lahore, Pakistan at the behest of World Vision to investigate a proposed film. On his way home there was a bomb scare on one of the flights and he spent Christmas in Thailand!

Life in Bangalore in 1984 was interesting. The first day we were there Sam was bit by the resident dog and it was determined he needed the in-stomach rabies shots! Our host, John, took Sam on the back of his scooter. Needles were not disposable and what the doctor was doing amounted to using the syringe twice with a needle change in between. Uncle was a retired Army officer and gave this doctor an ultimatum. Use newly sterilized needles and syringes on Sam or else! The first time the doctor used a needle fresh out of the sterilizer and Sam got a bad welt out of it! But Sam was what his mother called a “trooper” and if there were tears, a piece of candy from Uncle and that fun ride on the scooter wiped them away!

The house had no fridge or A/C and the electricity went off at 8pm and if you were not under your mosquito nets those nasty bugs bit you up. In fact, Sam Henrich was under his net but rolled up against it and he got about 100 bites! We bought our un-pasturized buffalo milk each day from a vendor on a bike and put it in a milk pasteurizer to make it drinkable. We would use it with Wheat-a-bix and at the end of the day (if we had milk left) we put a British malted milk powder in it called Horlicks. For transport we hailed a small three wheeled taxi called an “Auto” and the four of us packed in for the ride. Next door to us was the chief of police and his family. Let me start by saying that small boys could get away with anything and Sam was four. One day he went into their house and locked the door to the toilet from the outside with the chief inside. Sam lost the key and the chief had to throw his spare key out the window so the servant could let him out. We were appalled and embarrassed but the chief laughed, patted Sam on the head and pinched those rosy white cheeks. Another memory was when Chris’ cousin Carl visited us in Bangalore. We all decided to take the train to Chennai and on the way there was a derailment and we were stuck for hours. But what we remembered was the fact that he brought us Oreo cookies!

During this same trip to Chennai we met with one of the trainer assistants at the Bangalore workshop. Ilford Joseph and just graduated from the India Film School and brought his friend Edward Raj. Chris asked them what they wanted to do and they talked about a passion play on St Thomas Mount where 120,000 people came each Easter. It was a sound and light show and Ilford and Ilford and Edward wanted to film it but had no money. Chris asked, “how much?” The response $100! We said we have $100 and this resulted in visiting the director and presenting the idea to the actors and technicians who agreed to stay up overnight to let us film! That resulting film was shown in 100s of Tamil language video parlors and eventually we filmed “The Pearl”.

We were in India to direct an audio-visual workshop for the India Communication Institute, now Galilean International and it was held at the Ecumentical Christian Center(ECC) outside Bangalore. We lived there and Chris home schooled Caren and Sam. In 1984 it was a 20 mile ride through heavy forests but when we visited in Bangalore 2009 the city extended all the way to what was the city of Whitefield. Of course, the food served at the ECC was spicy and Sam got welts on his tongue from the chili. Finally, we were able to convince them to give us different food! Remember, in 1984 there was no bottled water and we carried a candle filter everywhere we went. There was no video training just writing, photography and sound/slides. We had brought a Kaypro computer and dot matrix printer with us. About the size of a suitcase. One day it started to smell at the desk where the computer sat and we thought a mouse had crawled inside and died. I disassembled that machine and could not figure out where the smell was coming from until I pulled out the desk drawer and discovered the dead mouse body at the back!

At the workshop we stayed in one of the small houses and ants were always a problem. Did you know that ants in India take naps? Yes, we found a group of them curled up in the cupboard, blew softly on them and they jumped up and picked up their burdens and scurried off. In any case, we had large water bugs who would hide in the overflow of the bathroom sink and when we turned on the faucet they would stick out their antennas and wave them at us! One day, we discovered that one had died from the poison and was on the floor in the kitchen.

The ants had also discovered this 3 inch delectable item and decided to carry it out to their nest. First they started dismantling the body leg by leg and carry the legs up over the door stoop. Then they linked together and picked up the by now dried out body and slowly move it to the doorway 20 feet away. Slowly. Then over the course of the next several days they figured out how to get it up the first 8 inch step, then the next 8 inch step, over the stoop and down to the outside. This is called working together and was a great home school project. Another interesting insect were the flying termites who swarmed each night at the conference when the outside lights were turned on. One night on the way to dinner, we noticed a larger toad, maybe 5-6 inches across. He was under the lights and his tongue busily flicking in and out to eat as many termites as possible. One evening we noticed that he had stopped eating so we nudged him with a foot. He tried to move but had eaten so much his stomach dragged on the concrete and he couldn’t move to get away!

1986 – Handclasp founder Maury Henrich along with a film team of Dan Henrich and Larry Dill traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan to produce a documentary on the Afghan Freedom Fighters who had fled the Soviet occupation of their country by walking over the Khyber Pass. The crew was taken into Afghanistan to interview a 100-year-old Afghan who recently had walked over the pass in winter with his four wives, 16 grandchildren and 100 sheep. We were carried over the border into Afghanistan illegally about 20 miles! We did get bak into Pakistan!

We stayed in a hotel in Pesharwar- do not remember the name. After a day in the refugee camps shooting we would try to get some food. A menu would be handed us with all sorts of chicken dishes. We would ask, “What do you have ready?”, the waiter would say everything. So my Dad would ask for item 1. “No sir, we are out,” So Item 2 and so on always “We are out.” You would get to the last item say Chicken curry and the reply would be “Oh yes, we have chicken curry – it is very good!” What we discovered after the third night was that the aid workers stayed at this hotel but ate at the Pearl Continental. So we went there for dinner and the food was good and plentiful. After we left Peshawar we learned that a suicide bomber had driven a truck into the restaurant and the explosion killed at least 24. It could have been us! We stopped at Lahore on the way back and were at the launching of Brother Andrew’s Gods Smuggler in Urdu. Our contact was Azad Marshall who we had met at the Center for Missions in Pasadena. Azad is now the Archbishop of Pakistan for the Anglican Church of Pakistan!

HCI had sent many tons of vegetable seed to Peshawar to establish Victory Gardens. Value of supplies estimated at $500,000. A partnership with HELP International was inked and the HCI medical warehouse became a clearing house for larger equipment which was shipped to the 150 non-profit hospitals HELP operated valued well over $1 million. Shipments to Sudan valued at $1 million. 

The media division partnered with Galilean International and the India Red Cross to produce a dramatic film called THE BIRTHDAY about blood donation. 

1988 – Dan Henrich & Family moved to Cairo, Egypt to assist TCI to develop the educational objectives for the “Farm of Dreams”, an 52 episode entertainment-education puppet series for children in the Middle East. During that time, a 14-day video production workshop was conducted for the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Service with 20 students. We also taught 55 Italian national workers to write and produce audio and video productions with Fedefilm in Rome.

1989– With the passing of founder Maury Henrich in October, the direction of HCI moved totally towards the use of media in prosocial development projects and Dan Henrich was elected President and CEO. Lois Henrich remained active on the board until her death in 2009. Paul & MarySue Verhagen were active on the Board of Directors since 1986 and co-taught our 2014 Chandigarh, India workshop.

1989-95- Henrich Family moved to Nairobi, Kenya. Workshops were completed for the: 

• Arusha, TZ – Habari Malum Media Acting training – 12 students
• Arusha, TZ – Habari Malum Media Video Production – 12 students
• Jos, Nigeria – New Life for All – Single Camera Production – 16 students
  • I traveled to Jos alone. During this time, there were many Soviet era Antonov planes that were leased by private airline companies in packages that included pilots and maintenance. My flight was on such an airline and I admit looked at the plane sitting on the taxiway I wondered. The paint was blistered off and it honestly looked really bad. We walked across to get into the plane and it looked like every seat was taken! A flight attendant kicked someone off the plane and I sat down. In the aisle across from me was a cage of chickens and behind me a goat on a leash. As we sat waiting it turned out that the East German pilot had arrived drunk and was forcibly ejected and we were waiting for his replacement. Finally one came and as the plane started moving off to the runway an official ran out and waved it down. Turned out a Nigerian government official wanted to get on the flight and, yes, police came on and ejected several people from business class to make way for the official and his friends. Remember the goat and chickens? The passengers were forced to put them out of the aisle during take off an landing but the aisle was full in the air!
  • In Jos I stayed in a church guest house which was quite nice. But I ate a lot of black beans. For breakfast, lunch and dinner for three weeks! My host was Jerry Farouk who was the national director and our goal was to get an old studio back into operation. The equipment was in disrepair and inoperable. But we did have a fun workshop! Jerry eventually became the partnership director at Wycliffe.
• Produced a family magazine and edited a weekly general circulation newspaper.
• Published in World Health Magazine, “Cinema on Wheels” about using mobile cinema vans to communicate health messages.
• Started working with Uganda refugees in Nairobi. 
• Methodist Church of Zimbabwe in Harare – Writing Workshop 25 students and Gweru – Magazine Production for 22 students. And Communicators conference.
  • We stayed in the Kentucky Airport Hotel for the conference – I remember it was painted red and white. Every morning during the conference you were served either coffee or tea at 6am in your hotel room. They came, pounded on the door and left the brew. Every day at lunch we got Oxtail soup with sadza. It was actually tasty but the bones in the soup were the tail joints. I then drove from Harare to Gerwu for the next workshop. It was amazing how good the roads were (especially compared to Nairobi)! All of the attendees stayed in a sort of hostel and it was cold. The windows did not close and the school location had only thin blankets! Our host was a Methodist circuit preacher and I was able to accompany him to some events. I remember sitting with a group of church elders in a small village. We were eating sadza which is a corn meal mush that is cooked in a pot and used variously as a foundation for a meal. The men were talking about how to cook it and how to know it was done. One older man was convinced you took some of it and threw it against the wall and it it stuck it was done. Others had equally strange opinions and all thought this the women served the men – I noticed smiles on their faces – the men had no clue because they had never cooked sadza! BTW, this same dish is called ughali in Kenya.
• Accra, Ghana Cinema Today Mobile Project hosted a 14-day Single Camera Video Production with 15 students. 
  • Cinema Today Mobile Cinema van ministry was one of the first groups to receive 16mm film of Sabina’s Encounter. Then I came to do the workshop the film print was so used that they were looking for more copies. The original elements had been lost and between the release in 1991 and 2021, there were no prints available. Our project to make available digital copies to cinemavan ministries in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania is ongoing.
• Nairobi, Kenya – Brachenhurst Conference Center – Week long Video workshop for Anglican Church of Kenya – 22 students.
  • Sudan Literature Center Workshop – Three months teaching Sudanese Christians to write and produce local magazines in what was southern Sudan – 12 students.
  • Production of “Sabina’s Encounter” and “A Healthy Step”.
  • Produced the first ever Swahili Worship cassette, Milele Shukrani (Forever Grateful) for Nairobi Chapel.
• Produced Oil Seed Documentary in Dodoma, Tanzania for Lutheran World Relief.
  • In order to get from Nairobi to Dodoma I had o get up early and take a shared taxi to the border with Tanzania. I sat in the last seat next to a man who had gone to get Yama Choma (burnt meat) to eat on the 3 hour trip. It smelled so bad and the man was sucking the fat from the bones. I was glad I had the window. The next morning in Arusha, my ride to Dodoma picked me up for the eight hour drive. It was a horrible road at the time and I felt like I had been beaten up with sticks! At Dodoma I was put into the strangest hotel. The doors to the small rooms had gaps at the bottom and you could imagine someone could sneak in – same with the common toilets! In any case I filmed the oil seed documentary which involved sunflower oil and upon completion the travel back was the same except I demanded a different hotel!
• Procured and installed data processing system for several NGOs in Kenya. We introduced email to many as a system called FIDO Net was used between Nairobi and London, then London and New York and finally into the MCI system. If one wrote an email in Nairobi at your office, it went to the node in Nairobi and at 10pm London called Nairobi and picked up the mail (and delivered what was incoming). London, then called New York at midnight and it was on the USA computer at 6am! All for 35 cents! So much cheaper than the fax machine for $10 per page.
• Produced documentary on the Lost Boys of Sudan for Radda Barnen (Swedish Save the Children) in Kenya. 
  • The documentary was about the young boys who fled from being impressed into the northern Sudanese army. In the early ’90s an estimated 20,000 boys embarked on treacherous journeys to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya where thousands were sheltered for several years. Some of the Lost Boys were offered new lives through official resettlement programs in the US. Our film was about the art program that allowed the boys to come to grips with the horrors of seeing lions snatch and kill the colleagues as well as the horrors of being attacked by the various factions in Sudan. In order to get to the United Nations Kakuma refugee camp in Lokichogio, Kenya near the Sudan border, we had to get into an old Soviet era cargo plane. No seats, room for cargo and we were on narrow road benches lining the side. This plane had no windows and it was cold. We were glad to get out. The camp itself was very nice with a cafeteria and lodging for Katrina Runyon and I. On the way back we had seats in a very nice executive plane but I wondered when the pilot put the auto pilot on and pulled out a paperback to read! Although we have lost the film itself it aired on Swedish Television!
• Set up a language dubbing studio in Nairobi, Kenya.
• A unique approach to media training was developed by Dan Henrich called PROCESS TRAINING: An Alternative to Conventional Visual Media Workshops . This approach is still used in training.

• Life in Nairobi was very pleasant. Because the elevation was about 6,000 feet you could stand in the sun if cold and the shade if hot. The sky had puffy white clouds and is usually rained the the evenings when it did. Sounds like heaven, right? Well, life was interesting and most people had a compound with barbed wire, a night guard and a dog. We had a German Shepard the kids named Aussie. Aussie snatched a pound of butter from the kitchen counter and ran outside to eat it. She was a great guard dog and when we found her mate she had a great litter of puppies. Our intent was to keep a female we named Sheba but Aussie saw her as competition and would attack her. We sold Sheba to other workers and she produced a series of puppies that people refer to as Sheba’s pups.
  • There is a separate chronicle of the escapades of our middle son, Michael but a short list is
    • Loosening the brake cable on Sam’s bike so Sam ran into a pole.
    • Putting needle nose pliers into the 220volt power plug and blowing the whole house fuse.
    • Crawled unto the waterbed in Nairobi and closed the trap door which was the size of his head. Got stuck and we thought we were going to have to drain the bed but after sever hours he got out! We nailed that door shut!

1996-1999 – Video Production workshops

• Manila, Philippines for CBN Asia 25 students
• Jakarta, Indonesia for CBN Asia 15 students
• Chennai, India for CBN Asia and Jesus Calls ministry
• Chiang Mai, Thailand for CBN Asia but held at the Christian Communication Institute (CCI) 16 students. Over the years we had a lot of connection with Joan and Alan Eubanks who founded CCI.
• Porto-Novo, Benin with Benin government employees 10 students
• Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso with a private TV station 10 students and
• Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire at the AoG radio station 18 students-
• Chiang Mai, Thailand – A three-week workshop was held as part of the Asian Institute of Christian Communications (AICC) with 12 students and a week-long training at Voice of Peace for Burmese workers of the Free Burma Rangers 13 students.

The AD2000 conference was held in Virginia Beach, VA for 40 international attendees and the resulting text, “Mediastrategy and Christian Witness” was edited by Dan Henrich and published by Handclasp. A documentary was produced in China on the MOSU people. A display of images at Liberty University called was released called Images of the Pacific Rim photo Exposition.

1999 —2002- Created entertainment-education programs in SE-Asia, assisted NGOS in SE-Asia in developing ways to use media for prosocial development.Set up language dubbing and production studio in Phnom Penh, Cambodia to produce educational children’s TV programs. We met Mickey Sampson in Chiang Mai in June 1999 and the Cambodia TV station wanted to air educational puppet programs and Dan went to Phnom Penh in August to conduct media training. Right after Christmas we brought Abraham Kasiki a dubbing expert from Kenya to Cambodia and we both installed a state of the art language dubbing studio that had been designed and procured by Handclasp board member, Paul Verhagen. In June 2000 we brought a group of students from Liberty University and produced short public service announcements.

• Remember Y2K? Everything was supposed to go off power, computers would die and so much more, the end of the world, etc. Well, the studio ran off a generator. We went to a Khmer party on the 31st and watched around the world as the new year was “rung in” without a problem! On the 31st we were taken to a party where the single women and single men danced separately but together – A sort of matchmaking dance. There was a wall of speakers 30 feet long and 12 feet high about 40 feet from where we sat. One could feel compression on your chest from the sound waves!

Dubbed English programming into Central Thai and Bahasa Indonesia dealing with family issues like spousal abuse, nutrition, and clean water. Research on production of educational spots to address social ills such as child labor, smoking and abuse. Project strategy efforts to assist NGOs to use media.

2003 – Continued support of Phnom Penh studio with additional equipment and training. Establishment of language dubbing studio in Yangon, Myanmar and project management in SE-Asia and Oceana. 

2004 – Assisted NGOs in SE Asia and Oceania with media training and strategy development. Project start of the NEVER TO LATE radio drama series in Thailand. 

2005 – Training and Recovery. With the aftermath of the Tsunami (Henrich documentary photos) that hit southern Thailand, Handclasp equipped and established a computer training center in Khao Lak. The long-term plan was to assist trauma victims in re-training and counseling. Project was turned over to a local outreach after a year of operation. Various media projects including training, production and dubbing of family oriented DVDS.

2006 – Media projects including training, production and dubbing of family oriented DVDS. Mediastrategy consulting of NGOS. Documentary photography (Bandar Lampung, Indonesia 2006).

---

2007-9 – Consulting with NGOS, language adaptation of English film into Thai, Burmese. Dubbing of films into Central Thai and Bahasa Indonesian. Mediastrategy consulting and documentary Photography in Myanmar(Nyang Shew and Inle Lake 2008), (Nanchang, China 2008), (Hong Kong 2008), (Beijing, China 2008), (Tiananmen Square Beijing China 2008), (Guangzhou, China 2008), (Tongren, China 2008), (Nanchang, China 2008)(Lincang, China 2009), (Chinese Burial Sites 2009), (Kunming, China 2009) (Mumbai City Scapes 2011. Pre-production research of a cultural TV program in India.

---

2009- Production of NEVER TOO LATE in Chinese, dubbing and language adaption of films into Isaan and Vietnamese.

2010 – 2017 –

• Haridwar, India February 2010 – Documentary photography of the Khumb Mela where Hindu pilgrims travel to take a ritual bath in the Ganges River in an attempt to be cleansed of sin. Documentary Images Here // Stories Here.
• Chennai, India April 8-19, 2013 Video training 12 students with Jim Sanjay of Shepard Media Link to Student Videos
• Production of educational film in Tamil using Red Camera,
• Chandigarth, India June 26-July 6, 2014 Jim Sanjay of Shepard Media 35 students Link to Student Videos // Documentary Images captured during Workshop
• Dehra Dun, India June 1-12, 2015 – 15 students with John Gideon and Jim Sanjay of Shepard Media Documentary
• Addis Ababa, Ethiopia May 15-26, 2017 – 20 students Lighting techniques and Smartphone Filmmaking Link to Student Videos

2018 – Mobile Filmmaking Workshops

• Chengdu, China June 24-29 12 students
• Shenzhen, China July 1-6 10 students 
• Chiang Mai, Thailand July 16-20 40 students.  Link for Student Projects // Documentary Images captured during Workshop

---

2019 – Mobile Filmmaking Workshops

• Mumbai, India (25 students) Link for Student Projects // Documentary Images captured during workshops in Mumbai and Varanasi
• Varanasi, India (15 students) Link for Student Projects
• Chandigarh, India (onsite mentor based training) Firefly Trailer
• Khon Kaen, Thailand (25 students) Link for Student Video Projects // Documentary Images captured during Workshop

---

2020 – Overseas onsite workshops suspended due to COVID restrictions. Online Moodle filmmaking training established (MobileTeach.site) A series of COVID Chronicles Videos were made.

---

2021– Mobile Filmmaking workshops

2022 – A decision was made to shift our corporate headquarters to Florida from California and HANDCLASP INC was formed in early 2022 as a 501©3 non-profit. The California corporation will be closed with the filing of the last Form 990 in early 2023. 

---

2023 – Board Members: James and Lausanne Carpenter joined Paul and MarySue Verhagen along with Dan and Christine Henrich as board members.