beholders.org

There are two ways to learn.. Through studying and through experiencing. Studying gives you information, data, perspective. Experiencing gives you life lessons, knowledge, and broadens your mind and your heart. Travelling allows you to relate to problems elsewhere as intimately personal issues, not just something you read about some faraway place that doesn't apply to you. It connects the knowledge to sounds, smells, a handshake, a hug, a smile, the tears and words of people you know are affected by the issues you are learning about. In 2010 a group of 14 teenagers decided to brave the world and experience some of the most crucial problems we have in the world today: AIDS, education, enviromental destruction, poverty. Below are projects they have prepared on these issues, to help teach us more about what they have learned. Keep an open mind and enjoy :-)

Taty Sena

My name is Rayn Riel, I'm from Brooklyn, New York. I'm 19 and graduated from The Beacon School, a public high school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, last year. I deferred from Tufts University, where I will be attending this coming fall in the Class of 2015, in order to take a gap year with a program called Thinking Beyond Borders. A group of 14 students, myself included, traveled for 8 months and in 8 different countries, studying a variety of international development issues. We went to Costa Rica, Peru, and Cambodia, but spent most of our time in four countries: Ecuador, China, India, and South Africa. We studied through community service work (for example, reforesting Ecuadorian jungles in an indigenous community, teaching English in Chinese schools, working on sustainable Indian farms, and helping AIDS & TB patients in South African slums), as well as through home-stays, cultural immersion, and seminars. We focused on the environment, education, sustainable agriculture, and public health through economic, social, and political lenses. In the United States, we spent over a month reflecting on what we learned abroad, meeting with representatives of various organizations, such as the U.N., and lobbying to our Senators and Congressmen on Capitol Hill. We also presented on what we learned to various high schools.

I have always felt passionate about the earth, and fixing its problems. Another passion of mine was design. Essentially, I was really into physical infrastructure – all types of buildings, trains, dams, bridges, tunnels… and I still am. I’ve always liked building and designing things – and I'm going to study architecture and engineering at school. I decided to go on this gap year because it would fulfill both of these interests: exploring the world, and, at the same time, design.

So, what did I learn? Well, it's impossible to touch on everything, especially because I'm still learning from my experiences. From different languages and different cultures, and how to wash clothes in a river, or what dog, tarantula, and many other foods taste like, to how to survive parasites and bacterial infections, to why I should care about the world's problems, I learned many things. I even learned about how bionically-minded, ecological, and sustainable design can positively impact society, the economy, the environment, education, agriculture, and public health.

Indeed, why should you care about the environment? Why should you care about education? Why should you care about agriculture/food? Why should you care about public health? If you don’t care, why don’t you? My final presentation answered these questions by exploring the interconnected nature of society, the economy, the environment, education, agriculture, public health, and us, and explaining through my personal experiences abroad. I also discussed how all of these factors can be positively impacted through my passion, design.

Besides our individual final presentations, we created four media projects in different small groups, and for each one we focused on a particular issue relating to the topic of the country, and explored it through various media.

In Ecuador, we created a cookbook, that not only included recipes for local cuisine, but also explored environmental issues facing the community.

CLICK HERE TO READ 

In China, we created a podcast and a newspaper, reporting the relationship between education and society.

CLICK HERE TO READ

In India, we created an informative video discussing the importance of sustainable urban agriculture.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

And finally, in South Africa, we created a pamphlet including our personal stories with our caregiver's patients, and elaborated on the difficulties that poverty brings to public health.
 
CLICK HERE TO READ

Feel free to explore my final presentation and my media projects that I worked on with my friends, here at Beholders. I guarantee that you'll learn something new.
CLICK HERE TO READ RAYN'S FINAL SPEECH (numbers correspond to images below) 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW RAYN'S IMAGES (images correspond to speech above)