BECATravels: Back to Karatu

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Back to Karatu

We drove back to Karatu on Sunday morning over the dusty, bumpy road. One of our two Land Rovers had a bit of car trouble – a faulty fuel pump that the drivers together fixed relatively quickly. Ryan, the Bayos’ four-year-old son, insisted on sitting by the window in the front seat next to me, but soon fell asleep in my arms, and stayed that way for most of the trip.

After landing back at the volunteer house, we dumped our luggage and went to the nearby Happy Days, an ex-pat hangout, for lunch (and Internet, we hoped). It took an hour to get served; in other words, the restaurant is much the same as it was three years ago – the food is good but the service is slow. And there was no Internet. Alas!

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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.