A senior Civil Engineering student from Kennesaw State traveled to Benin, West Africa last May to film a short documentary highlighting the struggles many students face in their journey toward quality education.
The impactful 10-minute film, titled “Education in Benin: The struggles of some children to have access to education,” took less than two weeks to make. As the director, Ulrich Sounkoua reached out to various schools beforehand to ask if he could film and interact with the children. Working with a local production company, Horizon+, he was able to truly capture what life is like for students in Benin.
The documentary features scenes of Sounkoua helping children to read, interviewing school directors and even visiting a high school to teach them about various merit-based scholarships they could earn.
Sounkoua hopes his film will help more people become aware of what life is like for those in under-resourced countries.
“I think the more you learn about what’s going on in some other places, you become more conscious of your spending,” Sounkoua said. “If I donate a dollar here, it could help pay for a child’s meal plan somewhere,”
When reflecting on his trip, Sounkoua said that it was surprising to learn just how many of the children could not afford their school’s meal plan. When converted to U.S. currency, the plan totaled to only 18 cents a month.
“That was really shocking,” Sounkoua said, “because when you think about it, that’s not even the price of a cup of coffee.”
Many children who cannot afford this meal plan will bring food from home. In the film, multiple young children eat porridge out of old soda bottles they brought with them to school.
Many of the classrooms are outdoors, meaning that If it begins to rain school is canceled and the children have to trek back home.
Remembering the everyday difficulties faced by these children motivated Sounkoua to make the documentary in an attempt “to raise awareness about all the struggles those kids have to go through just to have access to education.”
Originally from Benin, Sounkoua is a member of Sowers of Knowledge, a local chapter of the non-profit organization Seeds of Knowledge. SOK is dedicated to promoting literacy in primary school education in under-resourced countries like Benin, Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia and recently Haiti.
KSU’s chapter of SOK is one of several that works to make educational books for underprivileged children to learn about things like shapes, colors and numbers.
Students who want to get involved with SOK should visit its Owl Life page, its website or donate to its fundraiser on Crowdrise. You can find the documentary on YouTube in English and French by searching the title.
