Readers – please forgive my lengthy hiatus. I promise I was busy while I was gone – the past several months have been very exciting – I finished planning my wedding, got married and moved, all while taking graduate classes. I survived, though, and I’m here to update you on my latest journalistic endeavour.
Last week I returned from a week-long trip to Guatemala with the Florida Fly-Ins program. Fifteen of us – professional journalists and journalism students – converged on the the region of Zacapa for the purpose of gathering enough quotes, info, photos and video to create an online magazine about the hunger and malnutrition that are so prevalent in the area. Each person will produce a story (written, photo or video) exploring the topic from a different angle.
I will write a story about 21-year-old Jose Salguero, a young missionary who treks out into the mountains and jungles of Guatemala to find starving kids and bring them back to the nutritional center at Esperanza de Vida (translation: Hope of Life), the organization for which he works. I don’t want to give away too much now – but the story is really amazing. Jose has been through so much in his own life, and the tangled web of social problems in Guatemala really make his ‘rescue missions’ more complicated than they should be.
Right now we’re in the stage of putting our stories together. In December we’ll hold an exhibit displaying our work, and in January we’ll publish the magazine online. You can view projects from past years by clicking on the link above.
