The Children Shall Lead Us

Children of Tsunami captures how affected families are rebuilding their lives and slowly returning to normalcy.

To personalise the mass of statistics, aid pledges and recovery plans, we look at how all this affects eight children, their immediate families and communities.

From February to December 2005, local TV journalists and film-makers in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand will make monthly visits to the chosen families. They will find out what progress -- if any -- has been made, and record impressions of the children and family members.

By following the evolving stories of our eight children -- through monthly video reports and the website -- audiences will be able to find out answers to questions:

• How are individuals coping with the losses and grief?
• What are the unmet needs and unresolved issues in recovery?
• Are the pledges of aid and debt relief really working?
• What happens to the human rights of affected persons?
• How and where can individuals and aid donor countries influence a more systematic and equitable approach to rebuilding?

Although our stories will be centred around eight children, our media products will also cover the experiences of their families and communities.

This ‘bull’s eye’ illustrates how this will be done. The stories will be told against the backdrop of relief and rebuilding efforts and processes being carried out by governments, aid workers and NGOs -- who fall into the outer ring of our bull’s eye.

The challenge to our journalists and film-makers is to stay focused on the children while taking note of what’s going on in the background.