BECATravels: BECA Graduation

Thursday, May 26, 2016

BECA Graduation

Each year, the BECA Department holds its own graduation ceremony intended to complement the large university graduation. The BECA celebration occurred this afternoon, May 25th. Three students from the spring class preparing for the trip were at graduation: Kara De La Paz, Ashley Habr, and Jumana Zahid. Kara is a returning student who came back to SFSU to complete her degree after a number of years spent working and raising a family. Unfortunately, she will not be making the trip to Tanzania. Kara was one of the producers of the American Field Service videos. Ashley was the other producer for the spring semester. She will visit her extended family in Lebanon after she leaves Tanzania. Jumana, an editor for one of the AFS videos, is from Saudi Arabia. Enroute back to the U.S. from Tanzania, she will visit her home in Saudi Arabi. Her brother, a student at University of San Francisco, and her father attended the graduation.


L to R: Jumana Zahid, Kara De La Paz, Betsy Blosser and Ashley Habr

Also graduating were two students from last year's trip to Hyderabad, India. They are Lanica Garcia and Beau Mathews.

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BECA International Video Project

The BECA International Video Project began in 2001 when Dr. Betsy Blosser and then BECA graduate student Gabriela Martínez applied for a grant jointly offered by the San Francisco State Offices of International Programs and Community Service Learning. The purpose of the grant was to design and offer a service learning course that was international in nature. Blosser and Martínez proposed a class in which students would travel to Cusco, Peru, to produce PSAs for Huchuy Runa, an organization that works with street children in Cusco. Winning that grant led the two to offer a two-course sequence entitled, "Media and Community Service" in which students prepared for the trip during a class in the spring semester and traveled to Peru in June to produce the PSAs.

Since that time, the course has been offered 12 times, and students have traveled to Brazil, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Tanzania and Thailand, in addition to Peru. The title of the course has changed; it is now, "Electronic Media and Social Justice I & II." And students do two sets of productions: one, for a local, not-for-profit organization in the spring semester, and one for an NGO in the country they have studied in the summer.

In each case, it is important that students remember that they are "in service" to the respective organization. In part, this means that students produce the video(s) the organization wants or needs for its purposes. Students offer their media skills and, if requested, their advice, but the nature of the production is up to the organization. The organizations receive the videos free of charge, with the knowledge that they are receiving student-produced videos.

It is the intent of this project that students become exposed to social justice issues in the local Bay Area, where San Francisco State is located, and to social justice issues in the country to which they travel. In addition, they have the experience of practicing their craft in a low-resourced environment in the Global South. Usually, this is a transformational experience for the BECA students.