Final Videos

 Each of our three teams completed three final mini-documentary videos. At our presentation night, we showed four of them, then we gathered the following night to watch the rest together before posting them. All of them are below, beginning with the ones from the public presentations. 

On our presentation night, we opened with our emcees, Lilly and Brendan, talking about the beginnings of our journey right in the room where the presentations were held: Hagerty Lounge. Many DIRT groups of the past have found their way into unity within the walls of that room. It's the place where most people start to get the DIRT acronym down: Dismantle, Immerse, Reflect, Transform. We take apart a lot of our preconceptions in that room (Dismantle), then prepare to Immerse in the host community by living as closely to their way of life as we can safely accomplish; we Reflect through discussions onsite, personal journals, our daily blog/video entries, and our final projects; and as for Transformation, we hope to leave a measurable positive impact for our host community, but we also experience quite a bit of personal transformation as well. Lilly and Brendan talked about our trip and our projects onsite, then turned it over to the team called "Os Gauchos" (The Cowboys) to help people get an idea of how we prepared ourselves for our trip.

Os Gauchos talked a bit about our retreats and how we used them to get to know each other and to plan for  our entry into our host community called Anã in the Amazon region of northern Brazil. They noticed that two areas of common interest -- food and soccer -- became central points of connection between us and our hosts. The video they showed helped them to explain:

From there, the team called Os Patos (The Ducks) told us more about the community, its projects designed to improve their collective quality of life, and our participation in those projects, both this year and in prior DIRT trips. The video they featured focused on the fish farm the community began more than a decade ago that has now grown to a thriving enterprise of 50 "fish cages" that help them propagate a specialized food supply for their community and for visitors like us: 

The next team, As Onças (The Big Cats), provided more insights into the nature and beauty of the community in which we stayed. They used filmmaker Wes Anderson as a stylistic inspiration to show us some of the quirky beauty they experienced on the trip:

As Onças also shared a video they made by compiling interviews from all of our group members talking about their experiences, the impact of those experiences, and the transformations their lives have undergone because of this trip:

We will add the other five videos once we have seen them together as a group. Thanks for watching!