Every year, one or two freshly-minted Pepperdine alumni intern at a nonprofit called Made in the Streets (aka MITS). For 27 years, the organization has provided love, education, and job training to young people living on the streets in Nairobi, and they operate a boarding school in a neighborhood called Kamulu.

During my senior year, I was looking for a documentary subject when my friend Safeena Padder, who was interning MITS, suggested making a film about the school as told by a few of its students. We put together a crowdfunding campaign to cover airfare and food, and I flew out to film over Thanksgiving break, skipping the next week of classes to spend a total of two weeks in the field.

Production involved a few misadventures: due to a delayed takeoff and a missed connection in Dallas, I got stuck in London overnight, and upon arrival in Nairobi, my luggage was nowhere to be found. Fortunately, I had the essentials in my carry-on, but for the first few days, I didn’t have access to any stabilization equipment. I ended up borrowing a hacksaw and making an impromptu shoulder rig out of PVC and scavenged hardware. The shoot succeeded entirely due to the generosity and patience of Moses Okoth, who volunteered a significant chunk of his time to drive me around, and the main characters: Maina, Amina, and Moses.