Happy Solstice from Bridges to Understanding!
As we celebrate the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere on Saturday, June 20, our friends in the Southern Hemisphere will be celebrating the shortest day of their year. Each culture will mark the solstice with traditions that have evolved since the beginning of time. It’s these types of traditions and cultural differences and similarities that our students learn about as they produce and share digital stories and engage in online discussions in our classroom programs in Seattle, Peru, Guatemala, South Africa, India, Canada and our newest partner in Cambodia.
Since the last summer solstice, much has taken place at Bridges. The board approved our first long-range strategic plan. Joyce McClure, Bridges new executive director, led the strategic planning process and is now guiding its implementation. (Learn more about Joyce’s background on our staff page.)
Bridges Programs
Bridges’ staff and volunteers worked in 11 classrooms in Seattle this year, reaching more than 200 students who produced 44 digital stories to share online with their peers at our international sites. In turn, students at the international sites produced digital stories and participated in our online discussion forums where they asked and responded to questions about their lives and communities. In the course of our program, students built connections with and gained awareness of peers around the world.
We take delight in mentoring the students in their classrooms but the stories are entirely student-produced from topic choice to scriptwriting, photography to recording and final production. Topics this year included poverty and homelessness, the importance of sports in their lives, how eating local and organic food can help the environment and what they can do to help overcome conflict at their school. Watch the stories created by Bridges youth in our online gallery.
In May, we held a culminating event for Bridges students from Salmon Bay and Aki Kurose Middle Schools. Students from Salmon Bay traveled across town to Aki Kurose where 60 students enjoyed a morning of shared activities including a mini film festival of digital stories created in our classrooms this year, taking photo portraits of each other, calculating their eco-footprint and discussing actions they can take to help the environment. The students had a great time learning about each other. Both groups made a poster to hang in their school’s hallway as a reminder of the event and their new friends. Although these two schools are in the same city, the students rarely if ever have the opportunity to meet. This event helped break down the types of barriers and assumptions that exist in all large cities around the U.S.
We’re making our program bilingual! Thanks to our fantastic volunteers, our digital stories, curriculum guides, and online discussion forums are available in both English and Spanish. Our students in Guatemala and Peru can now view and learn from digital stories created by our Tibetan and our South African students and vice versa. The first story posted online with Spanish subtitles is “What Courage Means to Me” from the Tibetan Children’s Village.
Our Annual Fundraiser
Much to our delight, 250 people joined us on May 27th for “PICTURE THIS! A celebration of digital storytelling by youth worldwide.” We raised more than $53,000 in one evening from individuals and sponsors who share our belief in the power of youth to change the global community! Our planning committee was no less than remarkable. In addition to a small army of individual volunteers, we were privileged to benefit from the expertise of Ryan Hodgson and Aaron Straight of TriFilm Productions who provided their event and video production expertise pro bono. Many thanks to everyone who pitched in to help make the event a rousing success!
If you were unable to attend the event and would like to make a gift to Bridges, please click here to donate to Bridges.
Visit us at: www.bridgesweb.org
(206) 925-5300
Getty Images Building, 601 N. 34th Street, Seattle, WA. 98103 USA
Thanks to our event sponsors!
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