Maiden Voyage Productions

Mission

Maiden Voyage Productions (MVP) creates and supports media and education projects that ignite social, cultural and environmental awareness, including documentary films, interactive platforms, curriculum, websites and public outreach. We focus on programs that deepen understanding of different ways to live in the world, empower indigenous communities to share important cultural and environmental issues, and foster the growth of compassionate, informed and engaged global citizens. All products are intended for distribution through social, advocacy and educational networks, broadcast on public and cable media, and dissemination to schools, libraries and the general public.

Background

Gail Evenari founded MVP in 1994 with the production of Wayfinders: A Pacific Odyssey, an award-winning PBS documentary that chronicles the history and renaissance of Polynesian voyaging and navigation. She has worked in the fields of education and media for over four decades. In addition to teaching for many years, Gail wrote and designed Social Studies textbooks for major publishers, including Houghton Mifflin, Scott Foresman, Addison Wesley and Harcourt Brace. Her background in education and research—and her love of travel—led to making films about indigenous cultures for public television and organizing service and cultural immersion trips with teens to Mexico, Israel and France. MVP’s current current project, World Wise, brings her expertise, experience and passion together into a powerful vision for building empathy and global awareness in youth.

Additional MVP films include Hawai’i: Continuing Traditions, In the Wake of Our Ancestors, Alaska: The Yupik Eskimos, Timeless Craft: The Building of Mauloa, and A Gift for Abuelo, a film about Mexican culture and sea turtle conservation. Curriculum guides for PBS films include A Doula Story, The Calling, Havana Curveball and Elie Wiesel: First Person Singular. 

World Wise uses Virtual Reality documentaries (VR), interdisciplinary curriculum and interactive learning experiences to introduce young people to our planet’s diversity and engage them in global challenges we all face together. Taking action on an issue is usually sparked by feeling a connection. VR has the power to transform peer storytelling into immersive experiences that feel like personal interactions. Problems that are far away seem close; people and places that are different become familiar. World Wise leverages this connection and diminishes the sense of “the other” by encouraging the discovery of commonalities with youth who live in other cultures and environment and providing innovative opportunities for learning, cross-cultural exchange and community action.  

Maiden Voyage Productions is a California nonprofit organization (Tax ID 94-3191142).