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Sean Filzen Crosses Country, Lends a Helping Hand
Excerpt from an article by Molly Miron in The Bemidji Pioneer,
September 3, 2009.
Sean Filzen, a 26-year-old student at Marylhurst University in Oregon, chose a 30-day nationwide service outreach for his senior project.
With his uncle, Doug Francisco, and a van full of tools, he is traveling east from the West Coast to offering what he calls the Great American Bailout and National Neighbor Service Project.
"It’s a symbolic gesture, bailout from the bottom up," Filzen said. "I saw this as a possible solution, that we can still do little things for our neighbors."
To begin the project, Filzen said, he sent notices to chambers of commerce along their route. Since then, many of the stops have been through chance meetings or suggestions by people they have helped.
As a media and film major, Filzen also is documenting the trip with video interviews with people they meet along the road.
On Wednesday, Filzen and Francisco were cleaning up a grove of dead birch trees at the home of Irv and Karen Reeves and their sons, Garrett, 20, and Dutch, 15. For today, the Reeves family connected Filzen and Francisco with another area resident who needs help to finish painting his house.