University graduate student Jody Johnson is not a doctor.

She isn’t a filmmaker, either.

But during her spring break, Johnson took on both roles when she volunteered in a Kenyan orphans’ hospital and filmed her experience for mtvU’s new segment, Global Spring Break.

MtvU is a new cable channel associated with MTV that is aimed toward college students. It is broadcast to colleges across the country and can be viewed in the Founders Keepers Food Court.

Knowing she was about to travel to Kenya through Reach the Children, an organization that sends volunteers to depressed African nations, Johnson e-mailed mtvU to apply for their Global Spring Break segment.

When the producer called her back an hour later, Jody explained her spring break plans to him.

“Kenya is a beautiful country that is so abundant, but it’s also devastated by AIDS and poverty and famine,” Johnson said. “I went there because there is a need there, and when there’s a need, I have a desire to help kids when I can.”

According to mtvU spokesman David French, Johnson’s spring break was chosen by the network because of its compelling nature.

“Students often do very compelling and interesting things over spring break,” French said. “We’re always excited to share stories like Jody’s.”

Six U.S. college students were chosen for the Global Spring Break segments, handed a camera and instructed to film their overseas escapades.

During her three weeks in Kenya, Johnson gave medical assistance to hundreds of children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. Many of the children had AIDS themselves.

“All you could give them was aspirin and cough syrup, and you know they had much worse problems than that,” Johnson said.

The extreme poverty and malnutrition of the region north of Nairobi where Johnson visited became clear to her one day when a child came to the hospital, complaining of a stomachache.

When she asked him why his stomach hurt, the child responded that he had been eating rocks.

“They crave iron,” Johnson said. “So they think eating rocks and dirt is going to help them. It’s not.”

Johnson recalled purchasing shoes for dozens of impoverished children as one of her favorite memories from her spring break.

“There were about 45 orphans at the shelter we were at one day, and we traced their feet,” she said. “Then we went to the local shoemaker and asked him to make shoes to fit all their feet. The next day we went and gave them shoes, and it is just an amazing feeling to know that you gave a 15-year-old kid their first pair of shoes.”

“I wish everybody could feel the gratitude that I felt when that happened to me. They were wiping the soles of their shoes to keep them clean, because they wanted to take such good care of them.” she said.

This was not Johnson’s first experience in Africa. A graduate student completing her Master’s Degree in education, she traveled to South Africa last fall to teach primary school students.

Although she has no concrete plans for her future, Johnson said she will definitely return to Africa.

“You can’t go to Kenya and do what I did and see what I saw and feel the connection I felt with these people and leave it at that,” she said. “I can still see their faces and their smiles in my head, and I think of them often. It’s hard not to want to go back.”

Johnson hopes her Global Spring Break segment, a three- to four-minute clip, which will air sometime between Monday and Friday of next week, will bring more attention to the plight of AIDS orphans in Africa.

“The exposure from MTV creates awareness,” Johnson said. “Awareness is often the catalyst for positive change, and that’s all I want. I just want to make the world better.”