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This intensive course will focus on documentary photography and filmmaking. We will travel from Nairobi to Mombasa. Students will create either photo or video essays and perform community service in the form of collaborative educational experiences.
Introduction
Ross School students will engage in collaborative workshops with three groups in Kenya to produce a series of short multimedia projects that highlight the current issues facing these groups.
In Kenya they will work with Boy’s Town Orphanage outside Nairobi, the children of the local Maasai tribe on the Maasai Mara and the Yatta South Women’s Group in the Machakos Region. The most pressing issue facing the orphans outside of Nairobi is the pervasiveness of HIV and a dire lack of education. The Maasai struggle to preserve their culture while learning to embrace globalization, and the women of the Machakos region have the rare distinction of being the main bread winners in their society because a majority of the men have been lost to the AIDS epidemic. They survive by selling hand made goods, and struggle with the lack of easy access to water. Their region contains only a single well for potable water within a 50 mile radius, and access for many is only by foot.
Through these collaborative workshops, Ross School students will facilitate the opportunity for each group to explore their own world by photographing scenes from their lives and using their own images as catalysts for verbal and written expression. Ross School students will work in collaboration and peer-teach these groups, providing both technical knowledge and narrative storytelling skills. Framed around the themes of self-portrait, community, family, dreams, and current needs, both the Ross students and the indigenous groups will create a series of multimedia works in an effort to bring awareness to the daily challenges faced by their communities, with the final product to be hosted off a website set up for each group. Additionally Kenya is widely considered the forerunner in the development of eco-tourism on the African continent. Some of the world’s most innovative and promising community tourism projects have been developed in Kenya. Their new Safari Camps employ state-of-the-art environmental technologies and initiatives that enable local communities to benefit from their natural resources. This encourages the sustainable preservation of their country’s wildlife-rich tribal lands. The students will have the unique experience of a photographic safari through the Maasai Mara and , and the opportunity to learn about the vast array of environmental projects being developed there from our highly knowledgeable Kenyan guides.
Students will also be required to create either a personal photo essay or video montage about their travels through Kenya.
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