Will their video get a home for street kids?
HYDERABAD: Achild carrying a sack on his shoulder runs and boards a train. Another wades through dirt and muck, shoulders bent with the weight of the heavy sack he is carrying. Four children make a bed over two sacks, one’s head in another stomach, they sleep peacefully.
“There are 11 million children living on the streets in India,” says the voiceover.
Created by two class X students, ‘Ashritha’ is three-minute-30-second video of subtle yet strong frames of pain, suffering, osticization and abuse of children who lived on streets. Now they are living in a home called Ashritha Homes.
Made by best friends Manvi Teki and Sagrika Omkar of Pallavi Model Schools, Alwal, it was recently shortlisted for Harvard Impact Initiative of the Harvard Mock United Nations held in the city.
Though the street children have a home now, funds are drying up and in a month the boy’s facility, that houses 60 of them, could shut down if no help is offered.
“We were already participating in the HMUN and then we decided to take part in this initiate too. After brainstorming, we decided to bring forth the plight of Ashritha, run by Nagaraj,” says Manvi.
The duo won an award for their video and it has created quite a buzz online too. Within a couple of days of uploading the video, it got 3,800 views.
“No one talks about street children -- the reasons due to which they leave home, how they get addicted and exploited and their life on the streets, devoid of emotions and affection,” says Sagrika.
The video that begins on a dark note, giving insights into the lives of the runaway children, soon becomes full of colours and life as they talk about food,their home, school and Nagaraj.
To bring out an authentic insight into the lives of the children, Manvi and Sagrika spent a day with the children at Ashritha.
“It was the most satisfying and insightful day of our lives. Though making them to talk was a challenge, their pain moved us,” says Manvi.
Sagrika adds, “While talking about their lives before living in Ashritha, a lot of them had tears in their eyes.” And how did the girls react?
“We couldn’t get them out of our heads for several days after our visit,” says Manvi.
The girls say they were embarassed for cribbbing and fussing over their problems, which seemed so insignificant before the existential ones that were being faced by the children of the home.
Having made their maiden video in less than a week and getting an award for the same has not made the chums happy.
“Getting an award was not on our goal. HMUN was a different experience -- where we just spoke about pressing issues. But just speaking isn’t enough. We have to do something too. This video is our attempt to save the home of 60 homeless boys,” explains Sagrika.
Manisha Aggarwal, Manvi’s mother and managing director of Communication Resource Centre, says sensitising children from a young age is important.
“Our help for the video was only to set the equipment for them. Rest everything was done by them and if you see the video has many technical loopholes,” she says.
So what next? “I want to become an activist and work for the society,” pats come Sagrika’s reply.
For Manvi each day bring a new aspiration -- “a neurologist or a scientist with NASA, a lawyer perhaps!” are just some of the prospective aims.
The tenth graders may not have zeroed on the career they want to pursue, they certainly have set sights on making a mark on someone’s life, however small it may be. All the best to the girls and the street kids too!