Erin Bernhardt

Through journalism, filmmaking and events, Erin Bernhardt sets out to motivate and inspire individuals to rally behind important issues and causes. Drawing on her experience with television news reporting and the Peace Corps, Erin has found a niche exploring an intriguing topic in Africa: musical activism and how it influences education.

Erin is working full-time, without compensation, on her first independent documentary feature film about the African Children’s Choir titled “Imba Means Sing.” The feature film follows the story of Moses, Angel, and Nina, three young Africans who growing up in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, unable to afford to attend even the first grade.

The film is told through their perspective of being selected to join the Grammy-nominated African Children’s Choir and tour the world. On tour, the three youths raise enough money to fund their educations through university, which is something that fewer than one in five Ugandan children are able to accomplish.
Erin believes in the Choir’s children and in its mission to empower those children to become agents of positive change in their communities through education. According to Erin, her character-driven documentary has three key objectives:

* raise awareness about the need for universal education

* shed light on the power of music and arts to overcome the hardest of struggles in this world

* explore the differences and similarities of happiness and dignity across cultures

Erin is dedicating her time to create “Imba Means Sing” with the hope that the film can raise awareness about the global education crisis and change the way all individuals think about both the West and Africa.
Kevin Salwen, a friend of Erin’s, describes her as a person who “sees human potential — not in some people, but in all people. She sees the world’s problems as fixable with enough hard work and love. And she understands that her true gift is helping to tell the stories in ways that energize others to join the fight for good.”

Using her talent for storytelling to spark discussion about the global education crisis, Erin Bernhardt is a Daily Point of Light.