The Names of Solidarity (2016)

Following a group of High School students from a Toronto suburb on their social justice trip to Nicaragua, where they help build a school, the film questions the idea of solidarity. How are the realities and needs of people from third world countries formulated and understood in the first world? Does a brief experience of poverty broaden the students' awareness of global issues such as inequality, and if so, how does that benefit both students and the small communities they visit? The film's observational mode allows the audience to draw on the group's trip to identify the dynamics of what some call 'voluntourism'.