A Vancouver-based photographer is about to set off on the adventure of a lifetime.
Natalia Anja has been chosen as the winner of the Global Degree travel contest. She will spend the next four years travelling with Michael Graziano and Alex Hennessy as part of the TV project.
The 27-year-old is very excited to be embarking on this adventure.
“I have a little vision board and and on it it says ‘travel six months out of the year’,” she says.
The trio is headed off first to Asia, Australia and the South Pacific. That’s 35 countries in seven months before coming home to work and then heading back out on the road.
It’s no surprise Graziano and Hennessy received applications from 187 women all around the world. But they settled on Anja to help them tell the story of the next part of their journey.
For Anja, she says she wants to expand her photography skills and take photos of people in all the countries she visits. “Every single person is like ‘you’re going to come back completely different’,” she says.
Graziano says he thinks it’s the opposite. “The more you travel, the more you become yourself,” he says.
So far, Graziano and Hennessy have hit 17 countries in Central and South America. While Flight Centre is paying for airfare and Hostelworld is another sponsor, the pair are footing the bill for almost everything else.
WATCH: Natalia Anja’s audition tape on YouTube:
Graziano and Hennessy say they are like Anja’s “big protective bros.”
“The reason we want to bring her on in the first place is to show a woman can have the most fun of her life on her own, and so obviously we just want to hold the cameras and get footage of her having fun and being in the moment,” says Graziano.
“Our hope is that she’s going to be the voice of women in the places she goes and just speaks honestly in front of the camera.”
The idea of Global Degree is growing so fast that about 150 women have formed a community to get their ‘degree’, even if they are not officially part of the project.
“It has really become this little community,” says Hennessy.
Follow Global Degree on Twitter and on Facebook.
WATCH: Elaine Yong’s report on the contest before entries closed:
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