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UNICEF recruits kids as cast and crew for #FairStart film to combat inequality in India

#FairStartUNICEF hired a 15 year-old boy who cleans gutters to feed his family to help direct a film to raise awareness about opportunity inequality among children in India.

The United Nations children’s charity also enlisted a 10 year-old art director whose father is an alcoholic and a 13 year-old camera man from a poor single-parent family for the #FairStart film, which contrasts the lives of wealthy and disadvantaged children in India, who are less likely to grow up healthy and safe, attend school, and more likely to be married as children.

Caroline Den Dulk, chief, advocacy and communication at UNICEF India, said a “mindset shift” is required to affect change in India. “The #FairStart campaign aims at engaging the larger public in a debate and for everyone to see they have a role to play to make sure every child can have a fair chance in life,” she said.

The campaign, she noted, “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.”

According to UNICEF, 6.1 million children in India are out of school, 10 million children in India are engaged in work, 2.22 million Indian girls marry early every year, 23% girls between 15-19 years of age experience physical or sexual violence, and 3,500 children die every day before reaching the age of five.

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