Caroline Den Dulk with crew members of the film — Sahil (cameraman), Suraj (art director) and Belinda (costume designer)
Many kids from families with modest means lead a challenging life and yet, find reasons to smile. Given a fair start, these kids could perform as well or better than kids from well to do families. With this belief, Unicef recently launched a digital awareness campaign with an impactful film offering an insight into the lives of less fortunate children.
The film created by slum kids, who were the cast and crew, is produced by Avant Garde Films. The first of a series, the film makes use of rhymes to highlight the social inequity that exists around us, shares Caroline Den Dulk, Chief, Advocacy & Communication, Unicef India. She says, “To offer first-hand narratives of their lives, Unicef worked with children from across slums in Mumbai who are full of potential but less likely to grow up healthy and safe, less likely to attend school, less likely to learn and more likely to be married as children. Participating children contributed towards the film in various roles of cameraman, art director, costume designers, etc.”
The film opens with the sharp contrast of a child playing with a doll inside a car and a young boy selling roses at traffic signals, another scene shows a well-off pregnant mother and the mother-to-be working as a labourer at a construction site. The same stars on the sky beam down on the kid in a happy concrete home, and the child whose roof is the night sky. The film ends with an appeal to the viewer’s conscience to enable a #FairStart for every child. “Every child deserves a fair start in his/her life and deserves adequate nutrition, education, sanitation, protection and health care. The campaign draws attention to the lives of many children who are deprived of these basic rights, often at times determined simply by where they are born. Every child should have a fair and equal chance in life, irrespective of their caste, ethnicity, gender, poverty, region or religion,” points out Caroline.
The nearly 3-minute long film features a background score of nursery rhymes sung by children and highlights the stark disparities prevalent in the society. She says, “What it really tries to tell us is that even though there are inequities and disparities around us, not necessarily everybody sees this. That is what this film is trying — to open up and say, look around you. It is around you wherever you go.”
Citing data, Caroline explains that currently, 6.1 million kids in India are out of school (SRI-IMRB Study for MHRD, Govt of India, 2014), around 10 million children are engaged in work in India (Census 2011) and close to 3,500 children die everyday before reaching the age of 5 years (2013 Report of Sample Registration System). Besides, 42 per cent of tribal children in India are stunted in their growth and development (RSOC 2013-14) and about 564 million people still practice open defecation (Unicef-WHO Joint Monitoring Report 2015). “Girls in India deserve an equal chance in life too, but on an average 2.22 million girls marry every year in India and 23 per cent girls between the ages of 15 and 19 years experience physical or sexual violence,” she says.
Unicef works closely with the Government of India and many other partners for the betterment of the most vulnerable and deprived children, ensuring that each child born in this hugely populated country gets the best start in life and grows to his or her full potential. The campaign aims to reach out and encourage changemakers to engage in debates and dialogues to bring about a change in the mindset of the larger public, shares Caroline and adds, “Often the issues faced are immensely complex in nature and cut across all layers of society. To make change happen, a mind-shift is required. The #FairStart campaign aims at engaging the larger public in a debate for everyone to see that they have a role to play to make sure every child can have a fair chance in life.”
