A SMALL ACT/ NEW FILM

When Hilde Back sponsored a young, rural Kenyan student, she thought nothing of it. She certainly never expected to hear from him, but years later she does. Now a Harvard graduate and a Human Rights Lawyer for the United Nations, Chris Mburu decides to find the stranger that changed his life. Inspired by her generosity, he starts a scholarship program of his own and names it for his former benefactor.

The top students in Mukubu primary school are in the exact same situation as Chris once was. They are bright, but can't afford to pay school fees. With the creation of Chris' fund, these students have new hope. But the program is small; how many will qualify for a scholarship?

One day in the mid 1970s, a pre-school teacher living in Sweden named Hilde Back decided to sponsor an African student. Hilde, a Holocaust survivor whose parents were killed in the camps, lived modestly as a refugee in the safe haven of Sweden. Every month she put a few dollars in an envelope and sent it to a Kenyan boy named Chris Mburu. This was enough to get Chris through school. (In Kenya, at the time Chris was in school, students had to pay for their primary and secondary school education. Today, primary is free in Kenya, but secondary still costs.) Chris was inspired by his mysterious benefactor who lived so far away. Not only did he become a star student, he moved on from his village to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School. He became a United Nations human rights advocate, a post he holds today.

A Small Act Can Change the World

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-schneider/a-small-act-can-change-th_b_634064.html
One small act -- a couple of bucks -- changed his life. But it gets better. Chris decided to honor the benefactor he had never met. He established the Hilde Back Education Fund to sponsor more Kenyan students, to improve more young lives. Eventually, he tracked down the 80-year-old Back and brought her to Africa to see the results of her generosity.
It sounds a little like fiction, but this is the true story told in A Small Act, a documentary directed by Jennifer Arnold. Jennifer attended the University of Nairobi with Chris's cousin, and experienced firsthand what Kenya was like. She wanted others to have the experience of a prosperous Kenya with a sizable middle class. She set out to make a film about that and discovered even more.

"My mom was Peace Corps. I come from a long tradition in my family of, 'just do what you can to help other people.' We all believe in that in my family. Small actions totally make a difference." - Jennifer Arnold
Her film was initially intended to simply show a balanced view of Africa. Along the way, she discovered Chris and Hilde. As their story unfolded before her lens, Jennifer filmed in villages without electricity, using only battery power for the camera, and sometimes couldn't understand what was being said. (She speaks some Swahili, but many of the people she filmed spoke Kikiuyu.)
A Small Act was accepted at Sundance, and while it screened there with Chris and Hilde in attendance, Jennifer tells this remarkable story: "At Sundance, audience members started handing Chris and Hilde and us checks and cash. They were all donations to the fund. They donated $90,000 over the course of 10 days at Sundance. Then a philanthropist who saw the film just donated a quarter million dollars, just based off seeing the film," she told me.
What the film has taught her is this simple truth: If you feel like you can make a positive change once, you will do it again.

Jennifer Arnold, the director, sets out to tell the story of Chris Mburu, who as a child in a poor village in Kenya was probably destined for a life of hardship until a woman in Sweden named Hilde Back, participating in a sponsorship program, provided the modest amount of money needed to keep him in school. Mr. Mburu ended up with a degree from Harvard and a job with the United Nations investigating human-rights abuses.

The film cuts between two stories: Mr. Mburu's attempt to find Ms. Back and his efforts to start his own sponsorship fund for Kenyan youths and choose the first beneficiaries. Ms. Back turns out to have an unexpected personal story that makes their connection that much more stirring. But Mr. Mburu's philanthropic plan, which is pegged to students' performance on a nationwide test, is dealt a setback. And while all this is going on, Kenya erupts in violence after the disputed 2008 elections.