Ari Satok, from Toronto in Canada, spent 2014/2015 traveling to seven UWC schools and colleges - namely UWC Pearson, Li Po Chun, Robert Bosch, Atlantic, Maastricht, USA and Waterford Kamhlaba - in order to interview students about their life experiences as part of a storytelling project. He received a follow up grant to evolve his project into a book. The book, titled The Architects of Hope, has just been published and captures 16 life stories of UWC students told through poems written by Ari, all centered on the theme of hope.

We had a chat with Ari to know more about this journey around so many UWC schools and colleges, what he learnt from his visits and what motivated him - as a newcomer to the UWC movement - to launch into this project.

How and when did you first hear about UWC?

When I was an undergraduate at Princeton University, I was really involved with the international student community. So many of the other students who were similarly involved had gone to UWCs. As soon as they started telling me about their high school experiences, I became fascinated! So fascinated, in fact, that I ultimately decided to do my senior year sociology thesis about the UWC movement, researching values-based education. The research relied heavily on interviews with UWC grads, but I was lucky enough to also get to visit four of the UWC colleges through it (Pearson, Atlantic, Adriatic and Mostar): my first experiences seeing UWCs in action!

What were your first impressions of the schools?

I was absolutely blown away. The students were so warm and welcoming, and it was thrilling to be in schools that celebrated diversity in such beautiful ways. I still remember the first time I stepped in a UWC dining hall; it was mesmerizing to see students from so many countries under one roof. And it didn’t hurt that the schools were in such beautiful settings.

What was the most transformative moment of those visits?

I vividly remember a dinner I had with a student named Mira, who had grown up in Syria before the civil war forced her to leave her home and her country. She told me her story and, in doing so, put a human face to a conflict that had always felt so depersonalized to me. I realized during that chat how powerful stories could be in making us care about worlds beyond our own. It was a realization I would come to over and over again during my research visits.

Those visits sparked within me an idea for a project. The idea was to return to the UWCs, this time not to do research but instead to capture the incredible stories of the schools’ students, in order to share them both within and beyond the movement.

In the months to come, I put a project proposal together. I was fortunate to find UWC schools excited to host me as partners in my endeavor, and was able to find funding to make the project a reality. And then, starting in the fall of 2014, I began my travels going to seven UWC school and colleges (Pearson, Li Po Chun, Robert Bosch, Atlantic, Maastricht, USA, and Waterford Kamhlaba), for anywhere between 2 to 5 weeks each, interviewing students and producing stories for the project.

In designing your project, what was the motivation?

The idea that these students’ stories could inspire, educate, and let us see ourselves in the lives of others. And the fact that UWCs felt like the ultimate libraries of unwritten stories to capture.  

What medium did you produce the stories in?

At the beginning of my travels, I produced the stories almost exclusively in audio format. By the middle, I also started producing stories as poems. These are poems written by me, each of which captures the story of an individual student whom I interviewed. At the end of my travels, I was given a follow up grant to write a book that is a collection of these poems.

Why poetry?

I think poems have a unique ability to convey a lot of emotion and a deep sense of place in a really succinct way. They can also be more artistic than conventional journalism typically allows for. And, for this kind of storytelling, poetry also proved to be a really original format that excited me. The more I showed the poems to others, the more I learned that they too were excited about the uniqueness of the format!

Tell us more about the book. Could you maybe share some examples of the stories that it captures?

The book comprises sixteen poems about sixteen remarkable young people, whose stories all intersect the notion of hope.

In the stories of Kainat from Pakistan, who was shot by the Taliban in their quest to suppress girls’ education, and Sibia, from Guatemala, who grew up all too aware of her country’s glaring educational disparities, is the common hope for equality. In the stories of Aiham from Syria, who witnessed his country’s implosion, and Uddhav, from Nepal, who watched from afar as his country was brought to its knees by an earthquake, is the yearning to hope for a brighter tomorrow in the bleakness of a devastated present. In the stories of Arudi, from Kenya, who spent a year in New York, raising her voice through the Black Lives Matter movement, and Killaq, an indigenous student from Iqaluit in Northern Canada, who has spent years standing up for the lives of indigenous people and the preservation of their culture, is a shared hope for dignity and respect.

In every single story in this collection is a common vision for a better tomorrow that UWC students so powerfully possess. It’s a vision that I think desperately needs to be shared in the world today.

What’s your dream for this book moving forward?

The dream is simple - for it to get into the hands of as many people as possible, in order for them to be inspired by these remarkable stories.

Part of that dream involves partnering with schools all around the world, to get this book into the hands of their students.

At a personal level, what do you plan to do next?

I’m hard at work right now publicizing this book and working on a second poetry collection. And I hope to continue working on different innovative projects that bring education and storytelling together.

And, to ask one final question, what’s the biggest thing you’ve learned from this entire journey?

That everyone has a story worth sharing. And that all we need to do to learn from them is listen.

The Architects of Hope is available here. Ari Satok can be reached at arisatok92@gmail.com.