World Perspectives Program

I am involved with the Komera Club at GFA, which supports Rwandan girls getting an education. I got to travel to Rwanda with a group from GFA. It’s one thing to send support; it’s another to be in a village and see what it’s doing for the families there. Being in Rwanda distanced me from materialism for a while. I’m trying to maintain that. And I’m definitely going back.

“I helped start the International Youth Film Festival as a club at GFA because I loved my video class. That, Spanish, and my Global Thesis on Cuban Protest Music followed me to UCLA. To this day, I feel I was given the reins at GFA to explore something so vastly interesting, and then be guided to get the research tools and create something huge on my own. It set me up for what I’m doing now. I’m still pursuing Spanish and film to the point that over the summer I took a film class in Spain, where I was the only American.”

Throughout my trip, my definition of poverty changed, as we saw a population that cannot compete with our own country’s capacity to produce material goods, but is nonetheless filled with joy and purpose every day. It was also from my vantage point that I realized that despite man’s attempt to control nature, we are only guests here on a huge planet with an unbridled capacity to harm and hurt us at its own leisure.