Churchill students can see a better world

Collège Churchill High School students got an inside look into what life is like in a refugee camp.

Churchill is the current host site for A Better World is Insight, a 360-degree video installation presented by the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation, along with its Saskatchewan and Alberta counterparts. Students who enter the six-metre cylinder receive an immersive video experience on a global issue through a firsthand account.  

On Jan. 24, a group of Churchill students entered A Better World is Insight to watch Clouds Over Sidhra. The short film tells the story of Sidhra, a 12-year-old Syrian girl living in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan.

Joining the students on the International Day of Education were minister of education Wayne Ewasko, school trustee Lois Brothers and WSD acting director of student services Jón Olafson.

“I think being here for a year and a half has been long enough,” says Sidhra in the film, which was shot in 2014. “I will not be 12 forever. I will not be in Zaatari forever. My teachers say the clouds moving over us also came from Syria. Someday the clouds and me are going to turn around and go back home.”

Clouds Over Sidhra is one of four short films included in A Better World is Insight.

Samuel’s Fair Trade Journey concerns a coffee farmer in Kenya as he copes with the challenges of a changing climate, while Two Drops of Patience follows Patience Asiimewe and her polio vaccination team in northern Uganda. In Growing a World Wonder, a Senegalese girl and her family tend to a section of Africa’s Great Green Wall.

Before screening Clouds Over Sidhra, MCIC education specialist Amanda Benson led a workshop detailing the United Nations 17 sustainable development goals, which include no poverty, zero hunger, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, and climate action.

After watching the video, Benson asked the students to relate Sidhra’s story to the UN’s sustainable development goals, specifically gender equality.

MCIC executive director Janice Hamilton said A Better World is Insight aims to put real faces to real-world issues.

“We just think it’s a neat way for students to engage,” Hamilton said. “It’s a 12-year-old girl from the Global South that is sharing her story. It’s not one of us talking about refugee camps and the challenges inside of them. It feels like you’re in that camp for a little while, hearing from them, as opposed to us just telling their story.”

Grade 12 student Will Nguyen said the up close and personal nature of the experience made it all the more powerful.

“It’s almost like you’re there. You can feel the essence of the place and see the real people living there,” Nguyen said.

A Better World is Insight is funded by Global Affairs Canada, a department of the Government of Canada. The installation will be at Churchill until Feb. 9. It will visit four more Winnipeg schools, including École River Heights School from Feb. 28 to March 9.