Expanding Our Horizons

UT grads seek to link Knoxville with Central America through travel documentary project highlighting global concerns and non-profit efforts

In Guatemala, the non-profit group Refuge International works to provide clean water, health care and nutrition education to children and families. Honduras’ Global Business Brigade empowers residents by offering job training and employment resources. In Kingsport, Tenn., Backpod, the brainchild of University of Tennessee graduates Käri Foster and Michael Peters and New Yorker Eva Nudd, is gearing up to connect locals with the work of Central American non-profits through an online travel documentary and Web site dedicated to using art as a medium for change.

The trio plans to travel to Central America in late summer or early fall, visiting Refuge International, Global Business Brigade and other organizations to document the issues facing the region’s residents and the work and services of non-profits to address them.

The Backpod founders say they hope the online articles, interviews, videos and photographs documenting their journey and the lives and work of the people and organizations they visit, will create dialogue locally about possibilities for change and the connections to shared struggles throughout the global South.

“We had a friend who traveled in Central America and I became interested because I realized I was completely uninformed about what was happening down there,” Foster says. “To learn about the great work people were doing there and to realize how uninformed many of us here are about that part of the world … we [started to think] we could travel there and use art to inspire people and share resources for change.”

Foster received a degree in Public Relations from UT and has worked in the non-profit sector in New York. Peters has a Media Arts degree from UT and works with local galleries to bring international speakers and artists to Knoxville, most recently completing a show at Three Flights Up Gallery. Nudd has a Master’s degree in International Relations, focusing on human rights and international law.

Peters says the unique combination of their backgrounds helped shape the project, a concept they created from scratch that he describes as a “learning process.”

“We felt we could do outreach and bring communication outside of that Central America-specific area and we developed the Backpod idea as essentially just a way to communicate and expose these non-profits and what these people are doing to make a difference,” Peters says. “There’s no one before us that we know of who has paved the way and we’ve been doing a lot of learning as we go, but we have been pretty comfortable in saying it’s kind of a cutting-edge new thing.”

The novelty of their concept introduces some challenges, but Foster says the group hopes to use it to the advantage of the project and its subjects, combining an artistic eye with a social justice approach, allowing the non-profits they visit to present through Backpod’s camera lens, pens and laptops the information they feel is appropriate and important to their international audience.

“From my perspective, I know we’re going to make mistakes and may look like we don’t know what we’re doing at some points because we’ve never been there, but we have the idea it’s okay to make mistakes and just be open to what people are doing — that’s what I would like to get and share from the trip, is to be more open to what people are doing,” she says.

Backpod is currently in the fundraising phase of planning their journey. To learn more about Backpod or support the project with a donation, visit www.backpod.org.