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The Mothers of Sierra Leone project reached a major milestone when its films aired on national television. The Lehigh University initiative trains mothers to share their health stories through documentary film, highlighting experiences with prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, and maternal health challenges in Sierra Leone.

“Our Western perspectives will never be able to be an equivalent to Sierra Leonean perspectives,” said Lehigh student Julia Killar ‘27, who participated in the fieldwork. “The women themselves can share these stories better than anybody.”

Lehigh students recently released a behind-the-scenes video documenting their summer fieldwork in Sierra Leone, where they conducted film training sessions with mothers at locations including the Aberdeen Women's Centre in Freetown, Loreto Health Services in Makeni, and the University of Makeni.

The students are not just creating films about Sierra Leonean mothers, but are also training women to produce and share their own stories.

During the training sessions, students taught mothers technical filmmaking skills such as how to operate cameras, set up lighting and tripods, conduct interviews, and edit with voiceovers, according to Madeline Boughner ‘26.

“By using film, using story, I really want to help bring representation to people in communities who might feel that they often can't talk about their issues and feel that they might be stigmatized against or looked down upon for talking about their issues,” Boughner said. “This project just means so much to me because it's giving an opportunity for people to have their voices [heard] and for people to learn.”

For some women, the training sessions provided a safe space to share stories they had never told before.

“There's this one woman who was saying how yesterday was the first time she said her story out loud,” Chloe Chan ‘27, a premedical student at Lehigh said in the behind-the-scenes video. “She had never told anyone, and for some reason we were lucky enough to be the people that she felt comfortable enough to talk to.”

Chan added that many of the mothers were inspired by how technology can be used for good.

Boughner witnessed this while helping a participant named Angela edit her video.

“[I saw] how much light she had in her eyes as she saw the video coming together, she was very quiet in the beginning and just became so talkative by the end of it,” Boughner said.

Killar emphasized the community-building aspect.

“When the two women from Sierra Leone can talk to each other, that's beneficial for them as well because it lets them know that they're heard and they're seen and their stories mean something to the rest of the women in the community,” Killar said.

The Mothers of Sierra Leone project is supported by Lehigh University’s Office of Creative Inquiry and part of the Global Social Impact Fellowship. It collaborates with numerous community partners in Sierra Leone to conduct research on how storytelling on film can improve maternal health outcomes. Since the project started, the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health reports a 38.2% reduction in maternal mortality.

The initiative was co-founded by Michael Kramp, professor of English, and Fathima Wakeel, associate professor in the Department of Community & Population Health. 

“I think that the beauty of our work is that our students have the unique opportunity to engage in community-engaged research using a humanistic lens that foregrounds the voices of the women and healthcare workers in Sierra Leone,” Wakeel said in an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) story.

For the students, the experience has been transformative.

“I haven't really been here for that long, but I already feel like the impact that we have had as a team here is astronomical,” Eesha Gudoor ‘26 said. 

The behind-the-scenes video is available on the Mothers of Sierra Leone YouTube channel.