Physical Therapy Student Rachel Karpelowitz (‘2018) Hosts Human Rights Documentary

On May 1, second year physical therapy student Rachel Karpelowitz (‘2018) hosted a documentary on human rights.  Rachel is actively involved with a non-profit organization called ENGAGE (Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange), that works on many international projects centered around human rights and community organizing against large-scale development projects (www.engagegrassroots.org/).  She was part of a recent campaign that took a small delegation of Thai villagers on a 2 week exchange trip to Oaxaca, Mexico where they lived with and learned from local villagers who are also facing the massive destruction and human rights violations that have accompanied large-scale gold mines on their land.  To help shed light on this issue, ENGAGE made a documentary explaining the background of these villages and recorded the exchange trip as they followed these villagers from Thailand to Mexico and watched them build solidarity in fighting against gold mines around the world.

This was the first-ever public showing of their documentary, which was followed by a conversation around the implications of mining, the impact of government and large scale development projects, the impact to public health, and what it means to build solidarity and community.