Current Edition: Friday, April 6, 2012

Documentarian to HumanitarianBy PETER BRANNEN

Last month documentary filmmaker Len Morris of Vineyard Haven accepted the 2012Iqbal Masih Award for the Elimination of Child Labor from the U.S. Department ofLabor at a ceremony in Washington D.C. But Mr. Morris does not have the luxury ofbasking in the afterglow of the award ceremony. His Kenyan Schoolhouse program, nowin its tenth year, is currently putting 34 former child laborers and street children throughsecondary school, thanks mainly to Island donations, and on Thursday morning thisweek he got the bill for the latest semester: $4,125, due May 1.

Mr. Morris came to the cause of ending child labor unexpectedly, after a career as afilmmaker covering subjects as diverse as singing cowboys, Jewish history, and DizzieGillespie. In 1998 he was assigned to document child labor conditions for acongressional report on the country’s trade partners.

“It was a job,” he said in an interview Tuesday at his Vineyard Haven home. “Thenwhen I got there and started to see what we were talking about it shocked me. I just hadno idea it was going to be so intense, so overwhelming.”

Work filming in Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Mexico and the United Statesled to two documentaries, Stolen Childhoods and Rescuing Emmanuel. A third filmabout the role of global financial and governmental organizations in redressing theabuses of child labor, The Same Heart, is due out this fall.

The Kenyan Schoolhouse project began in 2002, when Mr. Morris and his crew, whichincludes his wife and filmmaking partner, Georgia, encountered pesticide-coatedchildren, some as young as nine, on a plantation picking coffee in Kenya. Much of thatcoffee would end up in the supply chain of familiar multinational corporations.Unsurprisingly, documenting the plight of underage laborers has proven to be fraughtwith hazard.

“I’m just a normal schmo,” Mr. Morris said laughing. “If I go to a park and the sign says‘No dogs,’ I’ll put my dog back in the car and go to another park. So being chased offplaces where children are being exploited by people who want to inflict physical harmon you is not fun, and it’s not something you want to be doing in your 50s, running likeyou’re 10 years old. And there was a good bit of that because you’re not welcome at

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these places. The welcome mat is not out.”

When filming ended in Kenya Mr. Morris and his crew found they could not sever theties to their subjects with the customary dispassion of a documentary crew. Instead, theybecame part of the story. At the time primary school enrollment cost $50 a year, a figurethat made education out of reach for half the country’s population.

“We got to know these kids and we got to like them,” he said. “On the last day when weknew we were leaving, I looked around this village and there were 30 kids and I went,hmmm, 30 kids, 50 bucks apiece. Hey guys, how much money you have? In my mind itwas like they’re hungry, they’re covered in pesticides, they shouldn’t be here, theyshouldn’t be doing this. This sucks. Fifteen hundred dollars will make it unsuck.”

When they got back to the States the film crew realized it had made a commitment to thechildren’s education. In the 10 years since, the Kenyan Schoolhouse program, and byextension the Vineyard, has put more than 400 children through school. Donation boxesfor the program dot the counters of Island businesses such as Tony’s Market, Jim’sMarket, Cronig’s Market, Alley’s General Store, Larsen’s Fish Market, IslandEntertainment, Morning Glory Farm, 7a Foods, Tisbury Farm Market and hopefullymore stores in the near future.

In his most recent visit to Kenya in September Mr. Morris met four of the young menwho had received an education thanks to the good will of an Island a world away. One ofthem was working on the coffee plantation during that formative visit in 2002.

“You don’t remember me, but I remember the first day you came to the plantation,” theyoung man said. “I was picking coffee. I was 10 years old.”

“It was touching and it was deeply moving and it was awesome,” Mr. Morris said of theexperience. “It was fabulous.”

Students in the program have earned scholarships to attend college for engineering,architecture and chemistry.

“This proves that poverty isn’t a final destination for these kids,” he said. “You’re notstupid just because you’re born poor. One of the children currently enrolled in the Masaiarea, William Muto, the headmaster describes as the most brilliant and talented child he’sever seen in his career as an educator.”

While the vicissitudes of the global financial system have been acutely felt in thedeveloping world, Mr. Morris and his co-producer, Petra Lent McCarron, say the toolkitfor social entrepreneurs to bring about change has been greatly expanded in the pastdecade, pointing to the success of campaigns like the KONY 2012 online video viewedby over 100 million people.

“I think it’s amazing,” Mr. Morris said. “I think it’s terrific. I can understand steppingback and saying, are we really going to have our foreign policy influenced by social

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networking? It raises some really interesting questions, but the genie’s out of the bottle.”

In 2008 Mr. Morris launched Media Voices for Children, a Web site billed as the“Huffington Post for children’s issues,” that aggregates the work of over 120organizations and activists on child labor issues. While he has plenty of statistics at theready to discourage even the most optimistic Pollyanna — there are 220 million childlaborers in the world, 2.5 million children with HIV, a half billion people go to bedhungry at night — Mr. Morris believes one should never lose sight of individual lives.

“This matters,” he said. “It matters to these children. They will change the lives of otherchildren in their communities, they will be role models within their families. They willchange things in concentric circles around them. They are, in very real terms, livessaved.”

To donate to the Kenyan Schoolhouse project, go to kenyanschoolhouse.org.

© 2012 Vineyard Gazette

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