BY KANESHA MARTIN
A Bachelor of Photography Student stopped by Sheridan last week to gather students support for his mission to help victims of human trafficking. Kyle Marko took headshots in B Wing at Trafalgar Campus, as a way to collect donations for his trip to the capital of Moldova, Chișinău. Moldova is right beside Romania and the Ukraine. All proceeds from Marko’s headshots are going towards rehabilitating men and women in Moldova who have been saved from the trafficking industry.
Students were able to donate money through a GoFundMe campaign called ‘Rehabilitating the world through Art’ which was set up for the cause. Marko’s main purpose of going to Moldova is to teach photography as an art form and use that as catalyst for that rehabilitation. He also created the initiative “worldlyrehab” which you can find on Instagram and he basically use that to talk about his missions trip, and to conduct interviews as well as to show people a first person view of how people in Moldova are living. This initiative is dedicated to rehabilitating the world through art.
“I have a heart, I want to help people. I can’t just be idle my whole life and say I support this, but I’m not actually doing anything to help it.” Marko says, “So I would donate money but I want to know where my money is actually going. So if I’m actually going I know where it’s going. That’s what inspired me to do this”
When he first started to pursue art Marko’s main goal was to help people. He says since school started he hasn’t been able to do that. “ I literally am one elective away from finishing my bachelor degree, and this is my footstep – My foot in the door of trying to actually help people.” He added that he has two more trips this year, and next year he plans on photographing the poaching of elephants in Taiwan if he’s able to raise enough money.