Camfed

Giving Women a Voice

At Camfed, we're dedicated to empowering women in rural Africa to share their stories. Our goal is to give them tools to connect with their communities, their countries and beyond.

One way we do this is through the power of film. In 2004, we launched a filmmaking-training program for women in Ghana. Through this workshop, participants were able to tell their stories through film and to start community-wide conversations about challenging topics like AIDS and domestic violence. We've expanded the program since then, training 44 women in filmmaking in Ghana and Zambia and helping them to become advocates for change.

Feature Films

When we expanded the filmmaking training to Zambia, we wanted to document the journey the women would take to become filmmakers. With the consent of the workshop participants, documentary filmmakers David Eberts and Helen Cotton chronicled the program. The resulting documentary, “Where the Water Meets the Sky,” written by Jordan Roberts (“March of the Penguins”) and narrated by Academy Award-winner Morgan Freeman, has won numerous awards and been screened at thousands of homes, universities and cultural institutions around the world.

After that success, in 2008, Helen Cotton and Academy Award-winner Ross Kauffman documented the first 10,000 Women Program in Young Women's Leadership and Enterprise, made possible through a joint partnership with Goldman Sachs and the University of Cambridge.Their inspirational film “The Entrepreneurs”, shows the journey of the young women participants as they learned business, marketing and leadership skills and launched their own enterprises.

Short Films

To connect our supporters worldwide with the rural areas in Africa where Camfed works, we share the stories of girls and young women on film. The stars of our short films are those in our programs, who are working to get an education, launch businesses or help their communities.