Within the United States we expect subjects to meet the Department of Housing and Urban Development income limits of extremely low income and not be in a university or training program or have an obvious active pathway out of poverty.

However, subject choice is ultimately up to the discretion of the local videographer. We encourage them to use local nonprofits or community leaders for leads. Moonjai’s philosophy is to make sure the videographer understands what constitutes extremely low-income and then give the videographer the freedom to find the subject and develop their story arc. We do not take cooking ability into account when choosing a subject.

Subjects are paid for their time and cooking costs. We currently pay subjects $300 which includes any recipe costs. Some of our earlier subjects received less.

Our subjects have said the payment goes a long way to helping them pay their monthly costs. The videographers we hire choose the subjects and do their best to share the subject's story with dignity.

There is no getting around it that there is some exploitive nature to this business model but we believe the subject payment and elevating their story with dignity outweighs that. 

If you feel the business model or any of Moonjai's videos paints a subject in an unfair, offensive, or poor light please contact us. That said, we do not want filmmakers to elevate a story with rose-tinted glasses; some stories are gritty, sad, and uncomfortable, but they are always human and can always be told with dignity. 

We only put up a portion of our films up on YouTube to help with exposure. 

YouTube doesn't have the written recipes, has ads, and is more difficult to filter.

Finally, if you subscribe to our paid site you'll add to the storytellers who we can financially support. 

Moonjai takes leads through Upwork, LinkedIn, Facebook groups, Fiverr, Reddit, Storyhunter, Videographer groups (for example Video Consortium) and Google searches. We have also hired through cold inbounds to our site. 

Videographers are chosen based off their portfolio, gear, and understanding of the Moonjai project. Moonjai tries to hire local videographers whenever possible. We care most about a videographer's ability at storytelling and least about their camera. 

Currently our rate is about one subject every two weeks. We want to increase that rate in 2024.

Yes, you are free to cancel any time and will not be charged for the next billing period

See the Videographer page

Videographers should have a portfolio track record.

Moonjai is a storytelling company and will never pretend to be journalists or in the journalism field.

We treat subjects as talent. We encourage videographers to understand the stories of subjects first prior to discussing payment for their time. We feel providing financial compensation to the most low-income outweighs any concerns of story embellishment. If anything we want to pay our subjects more. 

Within journalism the practice of paying subjects for interviews "checkbook journalism" is an ethical grey area as it can create an incentive for sources to embellish. 

Filmmakers do try to look for genuine stories and, when possible, work through their personal network, local nonprofits, and community organizations. We encourage filmmakers to seek out subjects as opposed to subjects seeking out the filmmaker, the former usually lends itself to more authenticity. 

We are purposeful of instructing the filmmaker to follow the subject's story with authenticity wherever that may lead. Common themes among the films are resilience in the face of adversity but that is something that, so far, has organically arisen. If you watch our films, most storytellers don't view much of their identity as being in poverty; that is something we want filmmakers to lean into because it is what the storytellers lean into. 

That said, many of our films do educate viewers on what life is like living on a low income and we think the best way to do this is through telling a subject's story with dignity.