A team of six Elon faculty, staff and students involved in Project Pericles will travel to the African nation of Namibia Jan. 11-31 to continue work on several video documentaries about HIV/AIDS on the continent. Details…
Tom Arcaro, professor of sociology and director of Project Pericles at Elon, Jay McMerty, senior video producer, and Bryan Baker, senior audio producer, will be joined by students Katrina Taylor, Rachel Copeland and Samantha White. Taylor is a communications major, while Copeland and White are Periclean Scholars, a select group of students who are focusing on the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
White and Copeland were selected by their Periclean Scholar peers to make the trip, which will include gathering interviews and footage for use in the documentaries. The documentary series, titled “Faces of Hope,” will examine the problem of AIDS in Africa from a variety of viewpoints. During the January trip, the Elon team will interview key staffers with Catholic AIDS Action, as well as children who have been orphaned by AIDS and a traditional healer.
The group will also gather video for use in public service announcements for Pfizer, Inc., to inform Namibians about the availability of new medications to fight AIDS. The Elon group will cut an audio CD of songs performed by the AIDS Awareness Club from Opuwo, Namibia. Plans call for the CD to be sold together with the documentary DVD, with proceeds benefiting HIV and AIDS efforts in Africa.
“The mission of the Periclean Scholars is to inform Americans about the problem of AIDS in Africa and Namibia,” Arcaro says. “By doing that, we hope to help out in whatever way we can. Not only do the Periclean Scholars help out locally, by informing citizens in our community about the problem, they also make a contribution globally.”
Elon is one of 10 colleges and universities nationwide to join Project Pericles, an initiative sponsored by the Eugene Lang Foundation, which challenges institutions to provide a learning experience that will “instill in students an abiding and active sense of social responsibility and civic concern.” A select group of students will be chosen as Periclean Scholars each year. They will take a specially designed course during their sophomore, junior and senior years, providing them with the tools necessary to become effective citizens not only in their local communities but in the larger world.