Snow Day is the first in a potential fleet of food trucks by the New York City-based nonprofit Drive Change. On its menu: locally-sourced, maple syrup-inspired food that is prepared, cooked and served by formerly incarcerated youth.
Jordyn Lexton founded the organization in 2013 with the goal of reducing the number of young people that return to jail after being released with a criminal record. She employs them at $11 and hour and provides what she hopes will be a launchpad into the food industry or other employment opportunities.
Tag: Documentary
Meet the Paraplegic Man Who Inspires Others to Think Outside the Chair
Most of us can’t begin to imagine scaling walls of ice, let alone doing it without the use of our legs. Yet, that’s exactly what Sean O’Neill, a climber from Maine, did.
On February 26, Sean became the first paraplegic to climb the treacherous 365-foot-tall iced waterfall known as Bridal Veil Falls in Telluride, Colorado. O’Neill didn’t attempt this dangerous feat simply to get a rush. Rather, he did it to inspire other disabled people to reconsider what is possible for them to accomplish.
This is only the latest adventure for the 48-year-old Sean and his 44-year-old brother Timmy, a documentarian who captured the eight-hour ascent on film. In years past, they’ve scaled the 3,000-foot cliff of El Capitan in Yosemite and thousand-foot ice walls in the glaciers of Alaska’s Ruth Gorge. According to Rock and Ice, Sean developed special equipment that allows wheelchair-bound people to climb, using a technique he calls “sit climbing.” Timmy told Jason Blevins of the Denver Post that Sean is “the Leonardo da Vinci of aid climbing.”
It took a coordinated team effort for Sean to accomplish the feat — long considered one of the most difficult ice climbs in America. His crew used a sled to pull him to the climbing site and cleared avalanche debris off the road so he could crawl to the bottom of the waterfall. Friends set the ropes he needed and helped him position his padded seat and customized tools. “For a paraplegic to get out of their chair is really uncommon. In fact, you can not only climb out of that chair, but live outside the chair,” Timmy told Blevins.
Timmy, who co-founded Paradox Sports in Boulder, Colorado along with Army veteran DJ Skelton and others to provide adaptive sports opportunities to the disabled, hopes to premier the film about his brother’s climb — tentatively titled “Struggle” — in May at the Telluride Film Festival.
For Sean, reaching the summit was the perfect cinematic moment: “You are at the top, and it’s like I’m born as a new person,” he said.
MORE: This Documentarian is Filming Incredible Vets and Helping Them at the Same Time
Can Ancient Native American Traditions Heal Today’s Vets?
For centuries, many Native American tribes held traditional rituals when their young men returned from battle to help reintegrate them into society. Today, some are performing these ceremonies to help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Utah filmmaker Taki Telonidis of the Western Folklife Center in Salt Lake City is shooting a documentary about these traditions and their effects on returning vets, many of whom come home with “invisible drama,” he told the Elko Free Daily Press. Telonidis is documenting the traditions of warriors among the Blackfeet tribe and the work of one Shosone-Paiute medicine man who conducts sweat lodges for all interested veterans at the George Wallen Veteran Affairs Center in Salt Lake.