Faces of EMS Exhibit Puts Pride of EMS Personnel on Display

Too often in EMS, providers go underappreciated.

“We wait until public safety people die until we thank them and tell them they’re a hero,” says Paul Falovolito, chief of White Oak EMS in western Pennsylvania and a professional photographer.

After a spate of negative press coverage regarding response times and finances of EMS organizations, followed by the closures of two of the bigger EMS services in the region, Falovolito decided he wanted to do something to show his appreciation for EMS providers.

With National EMS Week approaching in  May, Falovolito chose to do something bigger than the usual gestures.

“I’m not going to be one of those guys that buys anything from the promotional catalogs and turns around and hands my people a water bottle that says ‘Happy EMS Week’,” Falovolito says. “They deserve more than that.”

So he created his own show of appreciation.

His Faces of EMS exhibit is a six-feet tall, 12-feet long display of 53 images of EMS providers from 17 different providers in the western Pennsylvania region. The display, accompanied by a professionally-produced video, was displayed for the first time over the weekend at the Pittsburgh Fire and EMS Expo.

Falovolito says he had a few goals in mind when he created the project. The first is to increase public awareness about EMS, and to make the profession relevant to viewers by putting real faces behind it.

The second goal of the exhibit is recruitment. Falovolito wants to use the project to pique interest in the profession.

“I’m hoping it can get some people to say ‘Wow, I want to do that. I want to put on that uniform, and I want to help people,'” Falovolito says.

Third, and most important, he wants it to be a celebration. He says he hopes the exhibit can reach out and show providers how valued they are, and let them know they are appreciated.

So far, he says the exhibit is serving its intended purpose.

He says he encountered many people standing and looking at the exhibit who realized they knew someone on the wall they had not reached out to in a while, and seeing them on the wall made them want to get in contact.

“That’s exactly what I wanted the project to do,” Falovolito says.

For the future, Falovolito plans to keep expanding the wall. Just since the first reveal of the exhibit, he has already providers from three different services.

A hindrance, however, is the cost. As of now, Falovolito has paid all of the costs for the exhibit out of his own pocket. This includes travel, gas, time with photography and editing, having the wall produced (which totaled around $1,400) and booking a professional video company.

He has explored some avenues for funding, such as having corporate sponsors for the exhibit.

“Ultimately, I love the idea of someone else paying for the wall,” Falovolito says. “But, I don’t love the idea of the wall looking like NASCAR or the boards at a hockey arena with logos all over it.”

He says there have been organizations offer to create a GoFundMe page to fly him to their organization to shoot some of their providers.

“Ultimately, I don’t want to make one penny of profit off of this, but if people could cover my travel, I would do it,” Falovolito says.

Since launching the Facebook page and releasing his video on YouTube, he has garnered a good amount of attention and many requests from organizations to come shoot their providers.

He says there is no end date in mind for the exhibit, although he’s sure it will continue to grown until its inevitable end.

As long as the project continues growing, he will keep it alive, even if that means the wall is 100 feet long and has 1,000 faces.

“We have a lot of fun doing it, and the people that are a part of it love it,” Falovolito says.

For more information on the project, visit Faces of EMS.