For Educators
Take your students out of the classroom and into the field. You choose the destination, the dates, and how long you're gone. Actuality Abroad designs the documentary storytelling program (changemaker partnership, itinerary, production schedule) around your calendar, not the other way around.
How It Works
There is no set itinerary to choose from. You bring the destination interest, the dates, and the length, anywhere from one week to ten weeks, and we design the field study around your institution's requirements, credit structures, and academic calendar. Every proposal starts from your goals, not from a program we already had built.
Actuality Abroad has been running documentary field study trips for university faculty since 2010. We handle the logistics, the in-country operations, the changemaker partnerships, and the documentary production training. You focus on your students.
Every trip is built around a locally-led organization doing meaningful work in the destination you choose. Your students spend the time embedded with that organization, learning documentary storytelling by actually making a documentary. If there's time, the film screens publicly before everyone leaves.
Or email Robin directly: robin@actualityabroad.com
Schedule a call
Talk through your goals, your destination interests, your group size, and your timeline. Nothing is preset. We build the where, when, and how long around what works for your program, then tell you what we'd recommend.
Receive a custom proposal
We put together a detailed proposal built around your program goals, ready for university approval. Itinerary, budget, changemaker partnerships, learning outcomes.
Travel with your students
We handle everything on the ground. You show up, guide your students, and watch them make something real.
Why Documentary Storytelling
Skills
Research, interviewing, camera operation, audio recording, editing. Students learn by doing, on a real project, with real stakes. These are skills that work in journalism, marketing, advocacy, and media careers.
Immersion
Documentary work forces students to slow down, listen, and build real relationships with people in the community. This is not sightseeing. It is the deepest form of cultural immersion available in a short trip.
Output
Every trip ends with a completed documentary. Suitable for festival submission, departmental screening, undergraduate research conferences, and the changemaker organization's own outreach. Real work your students can be proud of.
Ethics
Every trip teaches responsible, collaborative documentary practice. Consent, co-creation, distribution planning with changemaker collaborators. Students leave with an ethical framework that shapes how they approach all future storytelling work.
Growth
Working in an unfamiliar environment, on a deadline, in a small team, with real collaborators builds resilience, adaptability, and confidence in ways that classroom work cannot replicate.
Support
Accommodation, transportation, changemaker partnerships, production equipment, translation, safety protocols, emergency contacts. You concentrate on your students. We handle everything else.
What Students Make
Documentary production
Students research, film, and edit a short documentary in collaboration with a changemaker working toward real change in a global community.
Impact journalism
Students report and write on the work of a changemaker, producing a story built for publication and an audience ready to listen.
Photography with purpose
Students photograph changemakers to tell the story of their work and produce images built for marketing and promotion.
From Faculty
Working with Actuality Abroad for my faculty-led study abroad was a great experience, both for myself and for the students. Not only did they have a fantastic time, but they both learned a lot and came away with quality films whose distribution benefits the NGO partners, themselves as aspiring filmmakers, and our department here at ODU.
Professor David Mallin
Old Dominion University
Since then, I have taken my students on three trips with Actuality Abroad. The experiences were life-changing for my students and helped them to create compelling and important work they could truly be proud of. It also helped raise the profile of documentary production in my department.
Professor Christopher Boulton
University of Tampa
The experience our students get from traveling with Actuality Abroad makes them better filmmakers, better artists and better persons.
Professor Ed Talavera
University of Miami
Get In Touch
Tell us about your group, your destination interests, and your goals. We will come back to you with ideas and, if it looks like a fit, a full custom proposal.
Schedule a call
Documentary Outreach Application
Step 1 of 4
Select one or both. You can be considered for multiple programs.
Please select at least one trip.
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Please enter a valid email.
Include country code.
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Required. Must be 18 or older.
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Step 2 of 4
Answer directly. Specific, human details beat polished, generated ones.
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Step 3 of 4
Help us understand your comfort level and how you like to work.
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Select all that apply.
Please select at least one role.
Step 4 of 4
A few optional links and one last question.
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Submitting your application…
Thank you. We review every application personally and will be in touch within a few days to schedule a call.
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