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MUMBAI: NDTV India and The Smile Foundation have won this year?s Asia-Pacific Child Rights Award for producing the short film series ?Let Them Touch the Sky (Chhoone Do Aasman)? in Tokyo during the ABU General Assembly. The Award, created by CASBAA, ABU and UNICEF, is given annually to the best television programme produced in the Asia-Pacific region with a focus on child rights.
The series, ?Let Them Touch the Sky? was immensely praised by the jurors for being exquisitely crafted, with the wonderful use of children as the protagonists and narrators. The series was very effective in captivating the basic essence of childhood and giving the audience the required space and imagination to cognize, relate and rejoice with their own. The series won accolades for being innovative and modern in style and an undivided opinion that each episode was excellently photographed and edited was thus achieved.
Pankaj Pachauri, Managing Editor-Special Projects for NDTV India said, ?This series is about the dreams and aspirations of the underprivileged children residing in the urban slums across the country. Though it brings the plight of these children to the forefront, these stories are not of despair. This also shows that good people oriented television is appreciated by viewers and stakeholders in our society?
Richa Sahai, Head of NDTV?s production house, RedDot Production, producer of the series, adds, ?The idea of the campaign was to give a name and identity to the faces of children we see around us every day and to create an emotional connect between those faces and the viewer ? and to do this in as simple and unobtrusive a way as possible. Underlining the entire campaign was the idea that every child, regardless of his background and circumstances, deserves an education?
25 stories three minutes films were aired five times a day from Monday to Friday. The 25 stories were shot across 12 cities in different states of the country. The campaign ended with two special shows ? a panel discussion hosted by Pankaj Pachauri and a half hour compilation hosted by Darsheel Safary.
Each film was a day in the life of one underprivileged child living in an urban slum in India and it aimed to put forward the hopes and dreams of that child and what he wanted to achieve in life. The film showcased the life of that child through their eyes and is in their voice. The children were captured in their own space and atmosphere and talked about their aspirations, what made them happy and what they wished to change around them.
