■ Young Benicia filmmaker wins $2,500 grant

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Eighteen-year-old Brady Hartinger wanted to convey a message: One word can change a life.

A senior at Benicia High School, he made a two-and-a-half-minute video that shows the consequences of a rash act on a school campus, with the help of friends and the Benicia Police Department.

Hartinger’s video recently won a $2,500 grant that will help fund the next Challenge Day — an international program that inspires participants “to live, study and work in an encouraging environment of acceptance, love and respect” — at Benicia High on Feb. 27.

“I was trying to think of problems that had occurred in the past at other high schools,” Hartinger told The Herald last week. “We did, last year, have a bomb threat at our school, but I think it was a joke played by one of the kids.”

Hartinger took the idea and asked, “what if it really happened?”

“What if one of the kids was really pushed to do that?” he said.

But with only a week to conceive, film and edit the entire production, he still needed a spark — something to jump-start the project.

He found it in a song: Carousel’s “Let’s Go Home.”

“When I found that song, it sounded like everything was in reverse in the beginning half, then it picked up in a different tone in the second half,” he said.

“It gave me the idea to show everything reversed in the first portion, then have it show what could have happened. The story just fell into place.”

Hartinger couldn’t have made the video without a lot of support, he said, not least from Benicia Police Department.

When he approached the department about his idea, “they said, ‘Oh, we can take it one step further. Instead of just showing you in the cell, we can actually handcuff you, pull you out, and put you in the cop car,’ and stuff like that,” Hartinger said.

In addition, several friends — Matt Russo, Adrian Coleman, Andrew Wheat and Dallas Petrie — helped Hartinger by portraying the main character.

Yet, “It wasn’t even about what people said when they were trying to help,” Hartinger said. “It was about how they were giving support.”

And that, said Shandrika Powell, one of the parents and volunteers working to bring Challenge Day back to BHS, is the point.

“That’s the main idea of Challenge Day, which is what makes Brady so brilliant,” she said.

According to challengeday.org, the Challenge Day mission “is to provide youth and their communities with experiential programs that demonstrate the possibility of love and connection through the celebration of diversity, truth and full expression.”

The vision of Challenge Day, the website explains, is that every child can live in a world where they feel safe, loved and celebrated.

Hartinger’s video was presented at the Feb. 7 meeting of the Benicia Unified School District Board of Trustees, where his award — and the date of the Challenge Day — were announced.

“We are very proud of him,” Superintendent Janice Adams said.

The Challenge Day program will consist of 100 students at the high school, chosen from different classes, groups, “cliques” and interests.

Hartinger, who participated in Challenge Day as a sophomore, explained the process: “When you go in, it’s very awkward with all the other kids. You immediately want to go to your friends. Throughout the beginning they have you interact with other kids that you normally wouldn’t.”

Participants play games, talk and do other things to get used to interacting with one another. “Then we start doing a thing where we cross a line. That’s when the emotions start coming out really strong. They say, ‘If you’ve ever been made fun of because you’re big, or because of your ethnicity, cross the line,’” he said.

“We all looked at each other and it was like, ‘Wow, we’re not too different from each other.’”

The participants are then broken into smaller groups, where they discuss what has been going on in their lives, good or bad. “And just be there for each other,” Hartinger said.

“It was incredible to build such a strong bond with the few people you are with in the small group, and to know you still have other people around you that are doing the same thing,” he said.

“Challenge Day gives you people you can go to, and it helps you open up and know that you are not alone.”

Because loneliness is common in high school, Powell said.

“Everybody who goes through high school feels alone in their own issues, and doesn’t feel like they’re necessarily in the masses with their problems,” she said.

Parent Lisa Villarreal has had three children participate in Challenge Day.

“I know that there’s a big impact on each of them in the sense of being more compassionate to each other, more understanding and less judgmental,” she said.

She and Powell are working to raise funds to run the program more than once a year, so more students have the opportunity to participate.

“Shandi and I wanted to see the program expanded so every student can go one time during their four years at high school. That was the case at least 10 years ago,” Villarreal said. “Because of all the cutbacks, it ended up getting dropped. Shandi and her daughters, thank goodness, revived it.”

They estimate having four Challenge Days each year would cost $16,000, “which is $40 a student one time during their whole high school career,” Villarreal said. “Or … it’s 1,600 students, so it’s $10 per student. That’s like two Grande Lattes at Starbuck’s. When you break it down to the small level, how hard could it be to get funding?”

Powell said this year’s Challenge Day has been funded by organizations such as St. Paul’s Church and the Kiwanis.

Now the organizers need to find adult volunteers to participate — with an emphasis on “participate.” “All the adult volunteers are participants, not just volunteers,” Powell said.

Hartinger said Challenge Day gave him a new perspective on how to interact with people.

“Instead of judging a person on a first look, it made me more interested in learning more about people,” he said. “It showed me that helping other people helps me out in a way.”

He said he doesn’t know of anyone who went through a Challenge Day program who didn’t get anything out of it. “There are a lot of people who didn’t get to go through it that make assumptions about it,” he said.

“For some kids, they bullied other kids, and to see how much that hurt other kids really upset them, and they felt really bad.

“A lot of those kids are are saying, ‘Oh, Challenge Day isn’t cool, you shouldn’t go to it,’ or whatever. Those kids are usually the ones that are bullying the other kids,” he said.

“And they’re the ones that need it the most,” Powell added.

For those interested in volunteering at Challenge Day on Feb. 27, call Shandrika Powell at 707-310-2539. For more information about Challenge Day, visit www.challengeday.org.

See Brady Hartinger’s video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwqAXZKCaWQ.