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Growing Up
( English, French, Spanish / 60 & 30 min. )
Country : UK
Production Co. : Central TV
Producer/Director : Julian Ware and Bruno
Sorrentino
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What does the future hold for the children of the new
Millennium? From
Brazil to China - in Norway, Kenya,
India, Latvia, the UK, South Africa and
the US -
GROWING UP follows the lives of 11 babies born in the
year of the
1992 UN Earth Summit to find out. The first
programme in the series
introduces audience to the
children, their parents and the environment in
which
they will grow up. In the Northern Kenya, Erdo is the
daughter of
Turkana herders, Esther and Christopher.
But their lives are shattered when
raiders steal their
cattle, and they are reduced to cutting the few
remaining
trees in the region to make charcoal to feed their
children. In
China’s Gaunghzhou City, baby Leong Yukkay is the first and
only child her parents Liang
and Zheng will have. Zheng works in a factory
manufacturing paper: effluents from the plant pollute the air and the
local countryside - but it’s typical of China’s wholesale drive to
develop and catch up with the industrialised north. And in India - where
child labour is illegal but often ignored - baby Panjarvanarn’s older
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sisters already work in a local match-making factory. Will
she escape the
same fate? Three years later, the second
progamme returns to measure the
children’s progress.
Some things have changed for the better. Some haven’t
changed at all. In south Africa, for instance, where
President Mandela’s
government has replaced the old
National Party regime, baby Justin’s
parents welcome the
changes which mean everyone working together for a
better country - and even feel relaxed enough to take a
holiday. But in
nearby Ciskei, where baby Vusumzi lives
with her single mother Mavis,
conditions are still very
much as they were in 1992. And in northern
California, a
question mark still hangs over the future of baby
Stephanie
as the exploitation of the last remaining
temperate forests continues
apace. Throughout the
1990s GROWING UP will pose a continuing challenge to
deliver on the promises made at the Rio Earth Summit.
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