Tristan Stoch (right) directs and Jason Hooper operates the camera.

 

Tristan Stoch, 21, is now in a Buddhist monastery filming a health clinic run by the Acupuncture Relief Project, or ARP.

 

ARP is a free community acupuncture clinic that travels to countries that have been impacted by poverty, conflict or disaster, according to the group’s website, www.acupuncturereliefproject.org.

 

Its primary clinic is located in Chapagaon, Nepal.

 

In a letter to Force, Stoch said he wanted to show the potential ARP’s model has for primary care in the Third World, to expose caregivers from the health care community to the work that ARP is doing in Nepal and to attract future volunteers and expand ARP’s work to the rest of the Third World.

 

“What really interests me as a filmmaker about the ARP clinic is the story of humans connecting and learning across cultures, languages and borders,” Stoch wrote.

 

Stoch is financing the movie through KickStart, an online service used by nonprofits to raise funds for their projects.

 

Collecting pledges

 

There are seven pledge levels from $1 to $500, with various incentives from a credit on the final film to a home-cooked meal for two prepared and served by Stoch (though only in the Portland, Ore., area).

 

The $6,091 KickStart goal represents about half of what is needed to finance the film, Stoch said.

 

“The project’s exposure is based on the number of people who donate,” Stoch wrote. “In this case, the donation of a single dollar can have more meaning than just the dollar’s monetary value.”

 

As of Friday, 111 donors had pledged $5,023, according to the website at http://tinyurl.com/cwbtkg8.

 

If he does not raise the total amount by Dec. 17, no money will be collected from the pledged donors.

 

Stoch said the pledged money will help cover his medical, insurance and equipment expenses in Nepal and allow him to edit the expected 100 hours of footage into a 20- to 30-minute film.

 

More information is available at the donation website, http://tinyurl.com/cwbtkg8.

 

Anyone with questions about the project can email Stoch directly at [email protected].