Project Description

The Trek Project:

The Trek project is a multi-facited investigation of communities on a local and global level, and US based thought around the construction of our communities. It consists of a preview project (in a yet to be determined medium) and a longer form documentary that will be shot primarily this summer in Philadelphia and Nicaragua.


Trek Preview Project:

Many times well-intentioned westerners go into Latin American countries to “help” the people in them. This summer I will be following an organization that has built hundreds of schools in developing countries to Nicaragua where a group of high school students will be building a school in a small village. Before I go on this trip to complete the longer form documentary I want to do a promotional and investigative preview by examining buildOn, the organization I will be traveling with. The preview project will be an examination of the ways that the organization functions within the US and the perspectives that they translate into their work in developing countries.

The Documentary:

This part of the project is an investigation into communities that will be expressed in the form of a documentary. I will be following a ‘trek for knowledge’, a program out of buildOn, to Nicaragua. The participants on the trek are members of buildOn, a program that requires its participants to do community service in their own areas in addition to fundraising and cultural education. For many students in buildOn, is the chief buildOn experience is a ‘trek for knowledge’. Trek allows students to bring together the 3 pillars of the buildOn experience (community service, global education, and fundraising), by traveling to one of the buildOn countries, living in a community for 2 weeks and constructing a school. My trek experience changed my life and the way that I see my community. I hope to bring that experience together in this documentary about the ways that we build community both at home and abroad.