Ojai Valley School students recently broke new ground, becoming the first to take part in a new partnership with the Los Angeles World Affairs Council aimed at furthering global understanding among high school students.
The school was invited last year to become part of a new initiative designed to involve more independent school students in a range of public programs sponsored by the World Affairs Council.
Craig Floyd, the school’s director of strategic initiatives, explored the offer and decided it would be a good opportunity for the school.
“The program lets the students become more involved with current world issues,” Mr. Floyd said. “The students get to learn and hear directly from leaders in business and government.”
OVS students plan to take part in a variety of World Affairs Council events throughout the school year, including a visit in November by former President Bill Clinton.
Recently, six journalism students traveled to the historic Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills to view a screening of the E-Team, a Netflix documentary tracing the chaotic and danger-filled lives of human rights investigators.
The documentary, set for release in late October, focused on four members of Human Rights Watch, following their investigations into war atrocities committed in the war-torn regions of Syria, Libya and Kosovo.
One of those involved in the documentary, cameraman James Foley, recently made news because he was brutally beheaded by the terrorist group, ISIS.
After the screening the filmmakers, Ross Kauffman and Katy Chevigny, took questions from the dozens of people who watched the documentary.
During the question and answer period, Kauffman and Chevigny spoke eloquently about their work throughout the film.
“We wanted to make a film with great characters doing extraordinary things,” Kauffman said. “That is what we set out to do. That is what we hope we did.”
The documentary is about 90 minutes long, but the filmmakers said they compiled about 350 hours of footage while following the human rights investigators. These horrible acts are going on a daily in these places of conflict, but often, to anyone living free in America, it is hard to empathize with the families experiencing these atrocities.
In addition to showing the dangerous work performed by the human rights works, Kauffman and Chevigny said they also set they also set out to reveal the humanity of those whose job it is to investigate these abuses.
“Kathy and I wanted to show a film not just about sadness, we wanted to show them there was hope,” Kauffman said.
The Ojai Valley School journalism students said they were moved by the documentary and now more informed about what is actually going on in these war-struck countries.
“The documentary screening was an amazing opportunity for the journalism program,” said Daphne Psaledakis, editor in chief of the OVS student newspaper, On the Hill. “Not only did we get to see a moving documentary before it was released, but we learned a lot about the art of journalism itself. It was very impactful.”