Studio 19 was the on-the-ground production partner for this TED video, filming inside refugee camps in Rwanda and Kakuma, Kenya to capture the human stories behind Chrystina Russell's global call to action.
CLIENT
TED Global ↗OUR ROLE
Field Production Partner
LOCATIONS
Rwanda & Kakuma, Kenya
PUBLISHED
TED.com & YouTube
TED Global partnered with us to capture the human reality behind one of the world's most undercovered crises: of the 70 million people displaced worldwide, only 3% have any access to higher education. Chrystina Russell, Executive Director of the Global Education Movement (GEM), was making the case for a new model. TED needed a field production team that could get inside the camps.
That meant deploying to refugee camps in Rwanda and Kakuma in northern Kenya. These are environments that require specialist access logistics, community trust, and crews experienced in filming sensitive stories with dignity. Studio 19 was brought in as the production partner to make it happen on the ground.
Filming inside active refugee camps requires navigating UNHCR protocols, host-government approvals, and camp administration sign-offs. We managed the full permissions chain across both Rwanda and Kakuma, ensuring the crew had legal, safe access before a single camera was set up.
Filming the lives of displaced people demands more than technical skill. It requires earned trust. Our crew worked alongside camp residents and GEM students to document their stories authentically, capturing the interviews, daily realities, and moments of aspiration that became the visual backbone of the film.
Two countries, two camps, one coherent visual story. We coordinated logistics, equipment, and crew across the Rwanda and Kenya shoots, managing travel, accommodation, and on-site production so the international team could focus entirely on the work.
FILMED AT
Refugee camps in Rwanda and Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, one of the world's largest and longest-running refugee settlements.
THEMES
Whether you're filming in remote communities, refugee settlements, or urban environments across the region, our crew handles access, logistics, and broadcast-quality capture from the ground up.