Global connections in SF’s Crissy Field

Half a world away, three students at Catholic University in Nairobi, Kenya, looked back.

The screen, which sits inside a gold-painted shipping container, connects people around the world through video chats.

The body-size screen in Crissy Field, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge, is part of a network of 30 portals stationed in 11 countries, including such hard-to-reach nations as Iraq, Rwanda and Afghanistan.

All that’s required for the other country is to have high-speed Internet and a willing host, such as a university.

Each portal has a projector and speakers that allow people to see and speak with counterparts in a similar portal — in a shipping container, a tent or a regular building.

San Francisco’s portal opened Thursday and will connect visitors to a variety of countries Thursdays through Sundays until it closes Sept. 24.

Bakshi called Moghtader one day and said he wanted to find a way to connect people across the world in a way that felt like they were in the same room.

In New York, the first group of portal users spoke with the people in Tehran for less than 10 minutes.

Kate Bickert, a senior director with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, worked with Moghtader recently to bring a portal to San Francisco after her own experience.

While visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in January, Bickert and her teenage daughter slipped into a portal that had been set up inside.

Across the globe in an Iraqi refugee camp in Erbil, three young men who had escaped from Islamic State-held Mosul entered one, too.

Bickert, her daughter and the Iraqis — who otherwise would never meet — talked about their lives for 45 minutes as if they were in the same room, not 7,000 miles and worlds apart.

Making the portal discussions work from country to country is a huge, logistical project, Moghtader said, referring to the time differences and set-up arrangements.