CHS Endowment Fund Promo

The story

What the work had to do

A documentary promo for the College of Health Sciences endowment fund at KNUST. It opens on the college as one of the six colleges of the university, with schools and faculties that include pharmacy, allied health, veterinary medicine, public health, and nursing and midwifery. Two research centres are named on camera: the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine, and a centre for global health and pandemic prevention. The film cites the university's quality assurance bulletin for the claim that the college accounts for about 30 percent of KNUST's research publications. The case for the fund is capacity. The college puts its student body at more than 11,000, with 57.5 percent women. Thousands apply each year and only a fraction are admitted, because the programmes are capped by professional regulators, including the Pharmacy Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Staff say the buildings and equipment have not kept up, and that the gap interrupts training. A student support fund has existed since 2013 for brilliant but needy students. A third-year veterinary student who benefited from it speaks in the film. The provost's office argues that fund is too small, and that graduate training still depends on scholarships abroad, so the college loses people it has already trained. The endowment is presented as the way to widen that support. Money is meant to expand facilities, take on more students who cannot pay, and fund research aimed at living standards and local disease. Part of the point of better facilities is to meet regulatory requirements and ask for a higher training quota. Deans and professors from dentistry, nursing and midwifery, and public health endorse the fund on camera. The appeal at the end is for gifts in cash, equipment, or buildings.