Koch Chair to discuss poverty and the media

Author and filmmaker Gerard Straub will give a Koch Chair presentation on Monday at 7 p.m. in Upper Gorecki. The lecture will elaborate on ideas of faith and its relationship to poverty and encourage others to investigate their ideas of God and loving others.

Straub started his television career in California in 1964. By the age of 21, he worked as an executive at CBS on notable productions like The Ed Sullivan Show. Straub said that while working in the production of television, he reached a point where he questioned the importance of his job.

“I said to myself, ‘Who would watch this stuff?’” Straub said.

Straub’s website states that, “after a career as a wealthy Hollywood producer and director” Straub went through a conversion. On a journey through Italy, he experienced a moment of wonder inside a vacant church.

“I felt the true love of God,” Straub said. “There is a lot of frightening stuff that comes out that makes a lot of people upset or nervous. This is a career as a wealthy Hollywood producer and director”

Straub went through a conversion. On a journey through Italy, he experienced a moment of wonder inside a vacant church.

“I felt the true love of God,” Straub said.

Straub cited this moment as changing the trajectory of his life. He went on to use his filmmaking abilities to better serve the poor by creating over 20 documentaries and nine books as a window into the lives of the impoverished and needy all over the world. He said he was largely inspired by the lives of historical figures such as St. Francis of Assisi and Thomas Merton.

Straub began his journey by establishing the Santa Chiara Children’s Center in Haiti in 2015, which he continues to direct today.

“There is a big difference between filming the poor and living with the poor,” Straub said.

When first living in Haiti, Straub said he handed out sandwiches to the children living in the slums of Port- au-Prince. However, the high level of violence and crime in the area has left many children in difficult circumstances.

“The city is 90 percent controlled by gangs,” Straub said.

Straub began offering daycare services for orphans and children whose parents needed assistance, but said that it would sometimes result in abandonment.

“Parents would drop off their children and never pick them up,” Straub said.

Today, the Children’s Center houses 50 children from infants to teenagers, seven of which have taken the last name Straub. They cover the costs of necessities for all the children they care for, which has reached over $700,000 per year, according to Straub.

In addition to his Koch lecture, Straub will present at the St. Cloud Newman Center on Saturday at 6:30 p.m., and will share clips of his documentary. Topics such as poverty, violence, prostitution, and addiction are all to be discussed.

Tim Welch, sponsor of Straub and former president of the National Association of Catechetical Media Professionals (NACMP), as well as a 1974 graduate of SJU, said Straub’s past public speeches have left a profound impact.

“You leave and cannot get it out of your head,” Welch said.