Start of Educate!

Eric Glustrom on how he started Educate!:

During high school, I became involved in Amnesty International, which allowed me to learn about a population of refugees that lived in Uganda. These refugees come from the warring countries surrounding Uganda: Sudan, Rwanda and Congo.

Although the government of Uganda does what it can to provide for the refugees, there is such a large exodus of men, women and children to the refugee camps in Uganda that many die because of starvation, disease and violence. The conditions in the refugee camps are often no better than the areas the refugees fled from initially, and sometimes much worse.

I wanted to learn more about the refugees of Uganda and give my fellow students in the States the opportunity to see what life was like in a much different part of the world. So in the summer of 2002, after my junior year in high school, I went on my own to two refugee camps in Uganda. I wanted to film a documentary that I could use to help my peers learn about the lives and suffering of the refugees in Uganda.

Many amazing and unexpected things happened on my trip. I distributed anti-malarial medicine to several hundred sick refugees. I contributed to the removal of a corrupt commandant from Kyangwali Refugee Camp who was beating, raping and even killing refugees. And upon returning I wrote about the conditions in the refugee camps and possible solutions to their problems. My report has been used by several Ugandan and American refugee-related organizations.

The documentary ended up being very different from what I had expected. I first thought that the documentary would be about the condition of the refugees, but it quickly developed into a film about the incredible life of a young refugee.

The most memorable, and life changing, part of my trip occurred on the first day that I was in Kyangwali Refugee Camp. A young refugee of about my age, seventeen, introduced himself to me. His name was Benson Olivier. Since this was the first time I had been to Africa, and definitely my first experience in a refugee camp, being introduced to someone of about my age was very comforting.

Benson and I became the best of friends and for the next three weeks that I was in the refugee camp we were inseparable. He guided me around, translated for me in all the local languages of the refugees, and after I taught him how to use my camera, acted as my sound technician as I filmed the documentary, Dream Deferred.

I will never forget the day when Benson invited me to eat dinner at his home. His home was a mud hut no larger than the size of an American bathroom. Inside he had a wooden stool, a few books to write in occasionally,  and a hay bed - those were all of his possessions. For dinner we each had one ear of maize that he had grown in his garden. Benson’s garden was small and I could tell how precious the food he harvested from it was to him. Normally, Benson would not eat much more than our dinner in a day.

Benson told me about his family: his parents, two brothers, and two sisters whom he thought had been murdered by rebels as they fled to Uganda from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Benson was the only member of his family to reach Uganda. He was 14-years-old at the time. From the age of 14, he had learned how to fend off deadly diseases, grow his own food, and survive in some of the worst conditions imaginable. Even more impressive than Benson’s ability to survive, is his warm heart, kind personality and great sense of humor in spite of his past hardships. Benson became more than a friend to me; he was a role model.

Before I left Uganda, I wanted more than anything to help Benson and the people of Kyangwali. I asked him what I could do, and he responded by asking only for an education so he could work to solve the problems in his community and homeland.  From these insightful words, Educate! was born.

I took Benson to a good school in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, where we enrolled him as a student. I told my friends back home about Benson, and they were interested in his story and how so many of his problems were solved through education. Started as a student-run organization, Educate! has now grown and our understanding of our work has deepened. However, Benson’s insight is still at the heart of what we do.

Our goal is to empower students to fight the larger problems of disease, poverty, and war that exist in Africa. We have so far been successful, as one can see from the success of our students, and I look forward to many more successes down the road. I believe that Educate!’s students will become the next generation of socially responsible leaders in Africa.