Picture This: Asking for Help

We are sending out this letter to people that we know overseas. If you are interested in helping us out, send this to your friends, or get started yourself.

Hi! We are a high school Destination Imagination team from Austin, Texas. In our project this year, we are trying to spread cultural awareness through pictures. We strive to expand our community’s awareness of cultural differences, as well as similarities. We are working to connect with children from around the world, through an adult friend, and have them send us pictures of their life and their adventures, so we can share it with our community. In this way, we can document our generation through pictures and words. We want to share these pictures with our friends and have our friends share it their friends. We want to give the world a chance to realize that the people that we share this earth with are more similar than we think.

We would like you to help us with our project. Ask a younger person to take pictures of their daily lives, and send us a reply email with their pictures. We may also be able to send a disposable camera to children who don’t have access to a digital camera. Our only concern is that the scanning in transit of our disposable camera may prevent the pictures from developing properly. If you are interested and have questions, please email us back. We would greatly appreciate your help with our project. Thanks!

If you are interested, please take a second to look at our blog: http://picturethisculture.blogspot.com/

Thanks again,

Austintatious Action

Picture This: Building a Set

Picture This: A Skit. In February, our Destination Imagination team will perform a skit that explains our project. At our last meeting, we started building our set.

 

"If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us." -Jim Rohn

Picture This: Beijing

Picture This: Getting Started

We just recently received our first pictures. It was truly an exciting moment to receive an email from Inner Mongolia, and seeing everyone's faces as we opened an email completely in Chinese. Luckily, we have a few members on our team who speak foreign languages, so it was no problem to read the contents and figure out how to download the file. The pictures were amazing. We saw food from across the globe: hot pots, octopus concoctions, and mats with tables low to the floor. Even though we're still waiting on the rest of the pictures, the first ones showed great promise and potential for the future of this project.

We've already made contact with a Russian orphanage, as well as some family members in Singapore. We know it'll be tough to orchestrate, but we think we may have as many as 15 contacts in other countries. And even though we will spend long days and cold winter nights assembling packages, printing pictures, and using miles of duct tape, it'll be worth it when we realize how much of difference we've made. This is what we daydream about during Algebra, what we think about before we go to sleep, and during each exhausting meeting. We try to nurture our ideas into something more than just an idea. Into something that can help our world and our generation and our future. No change is a small change. And we're loving every second of it. 

"When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way." -Wayne Dyer

Austintatious Action

Picture This: Globalizing Our Generation

It all started with a dream. But really. Sophia had this crazy idea which, like all genius ideas, came to her in a dream. She explained how she went to Africa and met a child. This kid thought her camera was pretty nifty, and asked her if he could have it. She made him promise that, in giving it to him, he would take pictures everyday and send them back to her when she went home. Sure enough, his whole life was revealed through the pictures he sent her.
Of course, Sophia never really went to Africa. She never really gave her camera to some kid who thought it was nifty. He never really sent her pictures of his whole life. But she did share her dream with us. Her Destination Imagination team. We saw took this dream, nourished it, and brought it life. Now we have this idea. It snoozes in the depths of our mind, awaiting the time it will be put into action.
Children of all ages. Cultures around the world. A hundred dollars worth of disposable cameras. And about a million dollars worth of shipping. We want to experience culture from the eyes of children across the globe. We want to send them a disposable camera, have them fill it up with pictures of their life and their adventures, send it back, and share it with you. In this way, we can document our generation through pictures and words. We want to share these pictures with our friends and have our friends share it their friends. Let's give the world a chance to realize that these people that we share this earth with are more similar than we think. We were all here when it started. And we will all be here when it ends. Don't you ever wonder what life is like off of the textbook pages? Outside of the confinements of a classroom? Outside of the country whose border we feel so secure in? I do. We have. We want to make this dream a reality. And we'll do anything it takes to make it happen.

Austintatious Action