Bloomfield students conduct campaign to help remote village

Fifth and sixth graders at Birmingham Covington School are on a mission to help the people in Chilupula, a village in Zambia East Africa, have a better quality of life.

 

 

The students in Pauline Roberts’ class are working to raise $12,000 to buy a tractor with which they can plow their fields and pull a wagon to take their crops to market, as well as a pump to provide fresh water for people, animals and crops.

 

 

As part of their effort to raise money, students wrote to businesses asking for sponsors with the promise to include advertisements for their businesses in their campaign material.

 

 

In part, the students wrote, the people in the village “could get more crops, profit, and trading goods with the tractors. The tractors will help them plow more land and in less time. With any extra money, we will buy water pumps to put in the places where water is not found.”

 

 

Through an email request to Birgit Keil, illustrator and producer, four students in Roberts’ class won the help from experts to make the animated video that tells the story of the villagers and how the tractor will help the people there. The students who led the project are Cory Gluckman, Riley Cook, Clayton Fox, and Fawaz Ahmedon.

 

 

“Of course, I had to said yes,” said Keil, who produced the project and who has had a long a personal interest in providing water to people without it.

 

 

The whiteboard animation used to make the video came to life under the instruction and guidance of Keil, illustrator and producer; Richard Roy, animator instructor at the College for Creative Studies; and Charlene Dwyer, editor, all of whom donated their time for the project.

 

 

Illustrations, drawn by Keil were then “animated” by the students. Roy captured the process by photographing each step. In playing the image sequence in reverse, Dwyer, makes it appear the students are actually drawing the 2,076 pictures required for the completed animation.

 

 

Roberts is in Barcelona now, presenting the animated video to the Microsoft Global Conference. The video might be used in other campaigns to help eradicate poverty around the world. She and her students are working with Professor George Sherman from the University of Florida on Project COPE (Community Action for Poverty and Environment). Project Cope trains people how to run a business and help the entire village. To view video, go to thttps://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gx3P4Ll9mK4