Please join us October 27th from 11 – 12:30 at the Center for Documentary Studies, for a special pre-screening of Shared Origins. This documentary explores the connections created across cultural and geographical distances, based on shared origins from Ethiopia. It’s a story both local and distant, whose outcomes are still being written. When two girls born in Ethiopia and raised in Hillsborough traveled back to Ethiopia, a new story line was begun that is still being written. In Addis Ababa, they met up with their childhood pen-pal, Helen. The girls became fast friends, and the following year Helen traveled to the United States to spend a year attending high school in North Carolina. She returned to Ethiopia, but her connection to NC has stayed alive – Helen has now been accepted to attend Meredith College.

As part of this screening event, you are invited to become part of Helen’s story. Meredith has offered some money in scholarship and financial aid and Helen has been raising money among her contacts in Ethiopia. She hopes to start in the Spring term and needs about $12,000 more to make that happen. We are joining her to raise money from our contacts in the United States and have set up a paypal account for this purpose.
This screening is a time to celebrate the Shared Origins story. We appreciate any donations to Helen’s fund, but would love to see you at the screening, regardless. Join us for some Ethiopian coffee and hot cider and to talk about the origins that we all share.

How to pledge:

[College Photographer of the Year, Bronze, 2010]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alison Aucoin and I have been collaborating on this project since April 2007, a year and a half before we traveled together to Ethiopia for Alison to adopt her daughter Ella Edelawit. Together, we have amassed thousands of photographs and dozens of hours of digital audio recordings. This project is a work in progress.

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From the very beginning of our friendship, we dreamt about traveling to Ethiopia together. Zoe and Tsehaye had always been very eager to experience and explore their country of birth, and Lory and Sonya are committed to maintaining a relationship with Ethiopia. In August 2009 our dream was realized. Lory, Zoe, Tsehaye and I traveled to Ethiopia along with another close friend Kim Ashley.

We explored Ethiopia’s rich historical and cultural sites, reconnected with Zoe and Tsehaye’s foster caretakers and collaborated on an interview project with a local youth-led film group called Sudden Flowers Productions. Through these photographs, we hope to communicate some of the rich experiences we shared on this incredible journey.

For more about this project go to: http://sharedorigins.org

TRAILER

In 2006, I experienced the other side of the adoption equation during the nine months I spent in Ethiopia as a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow through the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Placed with an organization called Hope for Children, which supports children whose families have been affected by HIV and allows them to stay within their own communities, I saw the efforts Ethiopians are making to support as many children as they can.

But, too, I saw the pain developing countries feel when they have no choice but to send their children abroad. In addition to being a life-changing experience, this exposure was essential in my quest to understand adoption. Having only seen adoption from the perspective of the adoptive family, I hadn’t seen the entire picture. Although I spent time in only one country and one community, seeing these harsh realities helped me gain a more critical eye and realize the circumstances and pressures felt by communities worldwide.

*The names have been changed to protect the children.

[Show as slideshow]

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[College Photographer of the Year, Silver, 2010]

Click here to view the embedded video.