Steven McCurdy

Making the World a Better Place

The author David Bornstein has written,

“people who solve problems must somehow first arrive at the belief that they can solve problems. This belief does not emerge suddenly. The capacity to cause change grows in an individual over time as small-scale efforts lead gradually to larger ones.  But the process needs a beginning, a story, an example…”

The beginning for me, began in late 2007, when I joined  a group of teenagers from Salt Lake City, Utah, on a humanitarian mission to northern India. My trip with the organization, Youth Making a Difference, was an experience that would profoundly change my life. Within a year, I had traveled to India three times. No longer could I look at a twenty dollar bill without thinking that it could build a well for fresh water in the jungle villages of Bengal or provide a stove and coal for almost a month to the cold children of Chamba.  I thought seriously for the first time about the plight of 1/3 of the population of India that lives on less than $1 dollar a day.

I thought,  “what can I do?”

Then I realized, I was doing something. I became profoundly aware  that filmmaking can tell the stories of those changing the world and in the telling, it too, just might make the world a better place.  In my film, “No Matter How Dark the Present” I tell the stories of youth making a difference, stories that have brought me here, to the place  where I know I am doing  something.

My hope and dream is that this effort will gradually grow to include hundreds of films, stories about humanitarian efforts all across the globe…and in the end, possibly move you to do something too.

Best wishes always,

Steve McCurdy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Inside Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.