Bridges mentors work with students in the Tibetan Children's Village. Photo by Josh Schachter.

What do people do after a Bridges workshop?

Many people come to a Bridges workshop to learn multi-media digital storytelling skills and about how we apply this work in our classrooms. Some then take that experience and apply it to their own work, or to volunteering with a local school or non-profit group in their community. We are so proud to share the projects of some of our recent workshop graduates here (links will take you to external sites):

• Elisabeth Mitchell and Anita Verna Crofts are both members of the training faculty for the Population Leadership Program (PLP), a private Initiative at the University of Washington with a mission to improve health Delivery systems worldwide. Elisabeth and Anita participated in the January 2008 Bridges weekend digital storytelling workshop in Seattle, in preparation for a leadership and management training they conducted in Sudan in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH). In this training, Elisabeth and Anita introduced the concept of digital storytelling as one strategic communication approach in the context of public health and participants each completed a story.
  See their digital stories at the Population Leadership Program website:
  
  
  
• Sara Guren, a photographer from Ohio , joined us for our workshop in Guatemala in November, 2007. Sara has traveled in Latin America for years, and this trip was a perfect patch for her goals: both to learn digital storytelling, and to give back to a community in this part of the world that she loves. She didn't know exactly how she'd use her new-found skills, but when she returned home a project fell in her lap.
  
  Middle school students at Hershey Montessori School in Huntsburg, Ohio had done an unbiased research project on a transmission power line that is proposed to cut through farm land across the street from their school. When they presented the research to the community, Sara saw an opportunity. The students hadn't been able to include the strong opinions they had against the project that would be so valuable for the community and the legislators to hear. Sara helped the students produce a multimedia digital story called titled "People Place and Power," that you can view now on youtube, and that will be submitted as evidence in the judicial public hearing, and also sent to the key legislators who ultimately will decide in July if the project goes through. The students were empowered by the opportunity to share their research and ideas, and by the hope that their project would show others in their community that they can be heard and make a difference. For more information about the project, you can contact Sara directly at sara@saraguren.com.