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`Children Have Something to Say' is the name of this series of 36 short films made by children in seven different states over a period of four years under a video magazine project conducted by the NGO, Plan India, that has achieved the rare distinction of being awarded the One World Media Award this year. And going by the wide variety of topics dealt with in these films and the in-depth manner in which the children have handled them, they in fact have a lot to say to the grown-ups. ``We started out by first enlisting our problems and then picked out a couple of them that seemed to us to be the most important. Hence through the films, we have tried to convey the problems that irk us the most in our community and the world outside,'' says John Peter, a student of class XII, who has been associated with the Mysore chapter of the project. John, who went to London along with three other children from the project to receive the One World Media Award for Special Achievement leads a group of children in Mysore district of Karnataka, which has made two films - one dealing with the issue of bonded labour and another with child marriage. This was infact, the first time that the award was given to children and also the first for an Indian team. `Bonded Generation', the film made by John and his group, tells the story of three brothers - Harisha, Ananda and Nagendra - all three of whom have become victims of bonded labour because of their father being unable to repay the money he borrowed from a village money-lender. ``As a result of the film, people in our area have become more resolute about tackling the problem and self-help groups are now taking up the issue,'' says John, whose group is one of the 19 that have made films as part of the workshop. The efforts of these children from Karnataka even made it to page 2 of UNICEF's yearly report `State of the World's Children 2002'. Initiated in 2000, under the project, children were trained in all aspects of film-making in 20-day workshops. Beginning with a brainstorming session to pick out issues that affected them, the children wrote the script for their film and learned the other technical aspects of film-making like shooting, sound recording and editing under guidance of film-maker Shonu Chandra, to make films completely on their own. ``The project is for those children who come from families and communities that survive on the bare necessities so that their everyday struggles get highlighted,'' says S Ranganathan, Country Director, Plan India. ``They have raised many questions. Now, it is for us to try and answer them,'' says Ranganathan. In concurrence, 15-year-old Raju, a rag-picker and `director' of the film `Victims of Garbage Dump', which is about the risk scores of rag-pickers, especially children, face while sifting through the garbage dumps in Delhi, says, ``there are many hazards that we face as rag-pickers - from the danger of being crushed to death by one of the dumpers or cranes at the dump to catching some dreaded disease. ``We have conveyed our problem. Now, it is for the grown-ups to do something about it,'' says Raju. -- PTI
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