The Why Foundation

In 2017, Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock set out to investigate campus free speech controversies - and uncovered an ideological war reshaping universities and democracy itself. With secret recordings, raw phone footage, and unprecedented access to professors, administrators and students on the front lines, Speechless is an eight-year investigation into how pressure from the Left inside campuses provoked a fierce counteroffensive from the Right - turning higher education into a political battleground and exposing what’s lost when debate gives way to dogma.

How are unskilled workers being trapped and trafficked in the Middle East? Mary Joy Dao-Ay is a Filipino maid who used to be a domestic worker in Lebanon. She left her 3 children in the Philippines, planning to pay for their education by earning a higher salary working in the Middle East. Instead, she was forced to flee for her own safety, and got stuck in Lebanon seeking refuge at a shelter. THE SECRET SLAVES OF THE MIDDLE EAST is the story of Mary Joys’ desperate struggle for justice, in a country with no labour laws protecting foreign domestic workers, and where the special Arab Kafala System renders it impossible for an unskilled worker to leave the country or change their employer. It is the story of how poverty leads unprivileged women from developing countries to be deceived and trafficked into slavery.

Hninn is a diligent student who wants to become a nun. In February 2021, the military seizes power in Myanmar and everything she has strived for vanishes overnight. Civil war breaks out in the country and Hnin's family must learn to live with constant fear: moving house, going into hiding, deciding who to trust and where to go at all. For six years, the camera follows them as they search for a safe place in a country torn apart. And yet, amidst all this horror, there is still room for faith, courage and even joy.