Mother and daughter capture courageous stories with the help of Skype

If you’ve ever felt like taking a year off and traveling around the world, then take inspiration from mother and daughter duo Marla and Kasha Slavner. Kasha, aged 16, convinced her mother to travel with her from Toronto, Canada to Asia. However, this was no ordinary trip as they went with the intention of filming stories of courage, hope and resilience shown by people who have risen above the difficulties in their lives. They named the project “The Global Sunrise Project” and ended up with more than 130 hours of footage and over 20,000 photographs.

Throughout their time in Asia, the two used Skype extensively to connect with loved ones back home, get in touch with organizations they wished to visit meet contacts in advance and co-ordinate travel plans. Even when the mother and daughter returned home, they used Skype for video interviews, production meetings, and keeping in touch with people they met on their travels.

Now with the aid of Skype, Marla and Kasha are creating a video series called the “Sunrise Chat for Social Good Series”. In this series, the mother and daughter team will discuss with different people about how to create change to improve lives. Each episode will have a different theme and introduce people to support the theme of the conversation.

In the first part of the series, which can be seen below, Kasha and her mom talk about putting purpose behind your passion to Lola Akinmade Åkerström, a National Geographic Creative Photographer/Writer, and Dylan Lowe, Social Entrepreneur & Founder of The Ripple Movement.

In the second part of the series, the two will be attending Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit. There, Kasha will show off her photography exhibition “Travels into the Heartland” which she took on the trip to Asia.

This project reminds us how useful a tool like Skype can be. With the recent addition of automatic translation and its integration into Windows 10, Skype will be around for quite some time to come.