The Question:

We want to know: What does your heart beat for?
It started the summer of 2006 on a city bus in Sofia, Bulgaria; I was eighteen and wide eyed as my team loudly observed the passing skyline each day on our way to a park clean-up project. On the last morning of our trip, a slender woman shuffled onto the bus and plopped down into the seat adjacent to me. For the sake of clarity, let's call her Ruth.

Ruth could have been fifteen, but the heavy eyeliner and stilettos gave her the air of a twenty-something club hopper. Unfortunately, her sexy outfit was not a style statement...but a uniform. Ruth was my first exposure to a real life prostitute; her hair was the color of flax seed and her eyes seemed distant and pensive. She hugged the steel wall of the metro bus and was given a wide birth by the much more virtuous commuters.

I want to tell her story. I want her to know she is not forgotten, that women around the world suffer from abuse and exploitation. I want to give Ruth a voice.

There have been many other times in my life that I felt a great passion beating in me, it has a rhythmic cry of "no more tears." When I see a hungry homeless man with a toothy grin, of a teen who has no healthcare. I want to help tell their stories; when I am filming, editing and writing I can feel this passion coming alive. I am a complete amateur in my field, but have a hunger to learn and develop at a film maker.

I want to be a story teller.

http://www.discoverthejourney.org