There are actually two things I wish to accomplish with TME.  One, as I mentioned, is to raise awareness of the issues facing Mongolia today and through that, to help out some of the charities and NGOs that do work there.  However, there is a second, equally important goal for TME: helping fledgling journalists.

You see, I went to a college where every student was required to do a master’s thesis-sized project in their final year (and nothing else but that).  I got to see some really awesome projects come to fruition, but I also saw a lot of even more incredible projects fall to the wayside because they were too complicated or too expensive for the average college student to pursue.  I myself have often had ideas for what I think would be really incredible projects that I would love to do, but I have been held back by the complications of logistics and fundraising.

The Mongolian Experiment is sort of a “proof of concept” for a new way of tackling journalism or documentary projects which otherwise might never get off the ground. It’s hard to plan an international expedition when you’re working 60 hour weeks on your way up from the bottom rungs of the field, and it’s my belief that such a situation ends up stifling out some really incredible voices.  I want to help give a voice to all the emerging journalists out there who have a great idea but no way to actualize it.

Through crowdsourcing the research and funding of TME, I plan to prove that someone with more passion and drive than time or money can achieve what they set out to accomplish by using similar methods. When TME is all said and done, I will be setting up a website to help streamline this process.

Normally such projects are only possible with the assistance of an established news agency.  However, such associations frequently come with many terms and conditions, and the stories which need to be told often go unpublicized.  My goal is to help the world by helping citizen journalists to complete projects which would normally only be possible with the assistance of a news source, thus helping to tell the world the stories it needs to hear.

[Photo by Chris Devers]