Volunteering for Indigenous Non-Profit, Guyana
Donation protected
Photo and Video Documenting on Volunteer Guyana Expedition 2019
Hi everyone,
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Emily Higgins. I was born on the East Coast of Canada into a wonderful, supportive family. They have always encouraged my dreams, and I have had a few! I began my early career as an archaeologist/anthropologist working on plant remains, and gradually migrated towards biology, earning an MSc last year from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.
I became so frustrated with how fast our natural world is deteriorating and the relatively slow pace of academia. Most of all, I was discouraged with the way that the majority of scientists communicate their work. I decided that I wanted to move into a field where I could make real changes for environmental issues and the communities dealing with them.
This past May, I began a professional degree in the Environmental Visual Communication (#evc2019) out of the Royal Ontario Museum (@romtoronto) in Toronto, Canada. I am currently learning how to run environmental campaigns for conservation groups, photography and videography methods, museum curation, environmental storytelling, graphic design, and communication methods. As part of the program, I am also going to be completing an internship with non-profit groups to further develop and enhance my skills; this is where I need your help!
I will be travelling to Georgetown, Guyana this August with 12 students from Ryerson University (Canada) and a professor (Joshua Feltham) from Fleming College’s School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences. The students are going to be completing courses in international development and sustainability, and I will be helping them learn photo and video documenting methods.
Guyana is located just north of the Amazon river in South America and is home to one of the largest unspoiled rainforests left in the world. Currently, the road to the interior of the country is poorly maintained, but local and international governments have plans to develop the road, providing easier and more frequent access to the resources in the interior of the country. Indigenous communities and conservation groups may soon have to combat big corporations for their rights to land and resources.
We will be working with two non-profits in Guyana, Iwokrama and Surama, to help them develop and achieve their own economic, environmental, and cultural sustainability goals. We want to give them the ability to overcome current and future challenges they will face in a changing socio-political and environmental climate and enhance their own self-determination.
Iwokrama is a rainforest conservation group that was formed by the Guyanese government just before the Rio Summit in 1989 and they focus on employing local indigenous community members. Surama is an eco-lodge, founded and run by an indigenous community in the interior of the country. Part of this volunteer placement will be dedicated to teaching Iwokrama & Surama how to use Adobe software to achieve their own business promotion goals. Throughout the two weeks we will be on the ground, I will be shooting my own photo and video content to supply the non-profits with promotion materials and documenting the course experience for Ryerson University.
Support provided by crowd funders will give back to these communities by funding a project that provides them with the resources to manage their resources and businesses. It will also help to document their sustainability efforts through photo and video methods for promotion purposes and provide access to necessary media software and workshops. Specifically, the funds raised here will help pay for my flights and additional camera/storage gear.
I want to thank everyone for reading my story and those of you who are able to donate. Environmental non-profits around the world are working hard to acquire the skills and software they need to tell their stories in a changing climate. I am so thankful that I can help in this process and look forward to telling my own stories about this amazing experience too.
Hi everyone,
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Emily Higgins. I was born on the East Coast of Canada into a wonderful, supportive family. They have always encouraged my dreams, and I have had a few! I began my early career as an archaeologist/anthropologist working on plant remains, and gradually migrated towards biology, earning an MSc last year from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.
I became so frustrated with how fast our natural world is deteriorating and the relatively slow pace of academia. Most of all, I was discouraged with the way that the majority of scientists communicate their work. I decided that I wanted to move into a field where I could make real changes for environmental issues and the communities dealing with them.
This past May, I began a professional degree in the Environmental Visual Communication (#evc2019) out of the Royal Ontario Museum (@romtoronto) in Toronto, Canada. I am currently learning how to run environmental campaigns for conservation groups, photography and videography methods, museum curation, environmental storytelling, graphic design, and communication methods. As part of the program, I am also going to be completing an internship with non-profit groups to further develop and enhance my skills; this is where I need your help!
I will be travelling to Georgetown, Guyana this August with 12 students from Ryerson University (Canada) and a professor (Joshua Feltham) from Fleming College’s School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences. The students are going to be completing courses in international development and sustainability, and I will be helping them learn photo and video documenting methods.
Guyana is located just north of the Amazon river in South America and is home to one of the largest unspoiled rainforests left in the world. Currently, the road to the interior of the country is poorly maintained, but local and international governments have plans to develop the road, providing easier and more frequent access to the resources in the interior of the country. Indigenous communities and conservation groups may soon have to combat big corporations for their rights to land and resources.
We will be working with two non-profits in Guyana, Iwokrama and Surama, to help them develop and achieve their own economic, environmental, and cultural sustainability goals. We want to give them the ability to overcome current and future challenges they will face in a changing socio-political and environmental climate and enhance their own self-determination.
Iwokrama is a rainforest conservation group that was formed by the Guyanese government just before the Rio Summit in 1989 and they focus on employing local indigenous community members. Surama is an eco-lodge, founded and run by an indigenous community in the interior of the country. Part of this volunteer placement will be dedicated to teaching Iwokrama & Surama how to use Adobe software to achieve their own business promotion goals. Throughout the two weeks we will be on the ground, I will be shooting my own photo and video content to supply the non-profits with promotion materials and documenting the course experience for Ryerson University.
Support provided by crowd funders will give back to these communities by funding a project that provides them with the resources to manage their resources and businesses. It will also help to document their sustainability efforts through photo and video methods for promotion purposes and provide access to necessary media software and workshops. Specifically, the funds raised here will help pay for my flights and additional camera/storage gear.
I want to thank everyone for reading my story and those of you who are able to donate. Environmental non-profits around the world are working hard to acquire the skills and software they need to tell their stories in a changing climate. I am so thankful that I can help in this process and look forward to telling my own stories about this amazing experience too.
Organizer
Emily Higgins
Organizer
York, ON
