NEW DELHI: A 15-year-old Indian girl from the western state of Maharashtra won an international award for her short documentary in New York. The girl, Jayashree, from Wada Taluka in Thane district, directed e 27-minute film titled “Fire in our Hearts,” which details the lives of children working at a brick kiln in the country. Reports have referred to the girl as a “tribal girl” as she is from rural India. The film won her the “One to Watch” award in the Asian-American Film Festival. In the film, Jayashree documented her family and village as well as the tenacious efforts of the tribal union for the equal rights to education. Hailing from socially and economically poor background, Jayashree quit school in 2003 at only 8-years-old. After her mother's death, she had to look after her three younger brothers while her father worked in a brick kiln. When media reported about her struggles, documentary filmmaker Joyce Chopra and his New York-based NGO, By Kids, approached Jayashree for the project. After a week of lessons on how to handle the camera, the girl marched to her village in Wada to document the story of her life. “It shows that if tribal girls are given opportunities, they can excel. However, the sorry state is that they have been ignored by the society and it is high time we bring them into the main stream,” Vivek Pandit, chief of the Shramajivi Sanghatana said.
