Mukul Madhav Foundation, the CSR partner of Finolex Industries dedicated to uplifting underprivileged and vulnerable communities, has launched a film that spotlights the dark reality of child trafficking.
The film conceptualised by Schbang tells the story of a young boy Bittu and his soft toy Balloo.
The story unfolds from Balloo’s point of view. Balloo introduces them as inseparable best friends. He keeps Bittu company even when the boy is eating or studying. One day, on the way back from school, they are seated at their favourite spot when a man approaches the child with a bar of chocolate. The screen goes blank and when Balloo re-emerges, he is battered and in a dark, dingy place. He wonders where Bittu is, before he is thrown to join a pile of soft toys. A super explains that every year thousands of children lose their freedom to human trafficking, adding that the Foundation has been working for two decades with partners to rescue and rehabilitate such children.
A statement on the campaign noted that child trafficking takes away not just childhood but also future potential and a child’s sense of self. Mukul Madhav Foundation collaborates with partners to rescue and also rehabilitate and reintegrate victims of child trafficking, it added.
Rishabh Pande, Group Creative Manager, Schbang, said, “76 years in and there’s a part of India that is still not free. This is the harsh reality that resides in the underbelly of an India that we do not see. It was therefore imperative for us to tell this sensitive story through a sensitive lens, a tale of an innocent soft toy juxtaposed with the tale of a not-so-innocent reality of child trafficking”
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