A new documentary, “Mother India: Life Through the Eyes of the Orphan,” released April 23, 2013. Narrated by Christian artist Rebecca St. James, the documentary follows 25 orphans who live on the streets of India. The group of 25 orphans is just a small part of the more than 31 million orphans living in India.
The film allows several of the young people, most in their late teens and early 20s, to tell the story of how they ended up on the streets and follows them through a few hours of their lives. Most of the young people were either beaten or abandoned by their families.
The group featured in the documentary lives next to the railway in Tenali, India, and has banded together as an extended family which provides the young adults a miniscule amount of security. The young adults are plagued by drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, police beatings, harassment by passing drunks, scant food, numerous injuries, AIDS. They earn their living begging on the streets and on the trains.
Only two of the orphans featured were young children and the filmmakers were able to help those two be placed in a stable children’s home.
Seeing beggars on the street is part of daily life in India. As a child living in India for three years with my family, I well remember the impression passing the maimed beggars on the street left with me. Later when I returned to India for a summer as a young adult, I experienced groups of young children flocking around us begging for money. Some of the children had been deliberately maimed by their parents so they could earn more money begging. We were told not to give any money or we would be besieged by hordes of children demanding rupees, so we had to walk past the young beggars, many of whom were probably orphans or abandoned children.
Mother India, is the work of first-time filmmakers David Trotter and Shawn Scheinoha. Their desire is to raise awareness of the orphans in India, both young and old, and to change lives. “Each of these young lives is much more than a statistic, says David Trotter. “Every one of them has a name, a face and a story.”
See the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa2GPfhd5wg
To win a copy of Mother India, enter our drawing by sending in a SASE with a list of your top 5 favorite Christian movies to:
Christian Activities Publications
7921 Saddle Ridge Trace
Nashville, TN 37221
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