Often as filmmakers we are exposed to some of life’s harshest realities. Nothing is tougher than stepping into the lives of children abandoned or orphaned by circumstance of poverty to a life of destitution. When we traveled to India to film The Children’s Light of Love Orphanage, we steeled ourselves in anticipation of an emotionally grueling shoot. 

We could not have been more wrong. Instead, we found ourselves surrounded by 500 joyful children who played with their friends, worked hard at their studies and dreamed of brighter futures.  It is no small task to heal the extreme traumas these children have suffered but in our short time we came to see the power of love and education to bring children back from the brink. 

Not only do the children find the resilience to create a new future for themselves but many want to return to their villages to create positive change in their communities. We are hard pressed to think of a more extraordinary human being than 13 year old Shalini. Abandoned in a railway station at the age of 2, today she voluntarily cares for the HIV children in the home and dreams of building a hospital in her village.