This study scrutinizes the role of documentaries to educate audiences about social change. Since their conception, one of the purposes of documentaries has been to educate audiences about social issues. This study highlights documentaries that have created a social impact, and identifies requisite features for an effective documentary produced for the purpose of social change. For this study, the theories of Experiential Education (Dewey, 1916), Critical Pedagogy (Freire, 1970), and Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1964) serve as the philosophies of education. The research on documentary film (Nichols, 1991; Rotha, 1936) delineates characteristics of effective documentaries for social change. And, Phenomenology (Casebier, 1991) and Text Hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1976) serve as the framework for the methodology of this study.

Combining the theoretical frameworks for film and education, the researcher conducts a qualitative examination of the documentary Blooming Hope: Harvesting Smiles in Port-de-Paix (2010). The documentary portrays three developing projects in northwest Haiti that include a fair-trade coffee cooperative, a fair-trade female artisan initiative, and solar energy cookers.

The findings of this study suggest the power of documentaries to encourage social change and to transform students through experiential educational models. As an outcome of this study, the researcher develops and proposes the Participatory Action-Based Documentary Model (PAD) and the Participatory Action-Based Learning Model (PAL) as methodologies for the effective production, implementation and uses of documentary films. Thus, the researcher concludes that documentaries can be contributors to the evolution of humanity.