Blue Eye Films premieres ‘Save the Street Child’

By Alexander Nyarko Yeboah, GNA

Accra Aug. 28, GNA -‘Save the Street Child’, Ghana’s first  charity driven movie is set to premiere on Saturday 31st August, 2019 at the SNAP Cinema inside the AMA New Building, Tudu, Accra.

The  movie with an eye on influencing society to deal with the menace of streetism, features new generation actors such as Ophelia Doefia who plays the leading role with Christine Owusu-Addo, Regina Dogbe and Stanley, playing the support roles.

Vincent McCauley Jnr of ‘Things we do for love’ and ‘Yolo’ fame, Lydia Ayiku (Mamalistic), Gladys Deeku, Tracy Mensah, Isaac Kofi Arthur and Belinda Panda were on set to tell the compelling story on streetism.     

A press release copied to  the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Tuesday, says Mr Frankauophy Awuku Hanyabui, director and producer, in his desire to tell how society had neglected its responsibility to the needy, observed that “in our daily rooting, we see many orphans and street children on the streets and market areas begging, hawking and striving just to get a daily meal.”

Mr. Hanyabui, who is known in the movie industry as “Dr. Hollywood”, hinted that these children sometimes were involved in the picking of scraps, picking of pocket and participating in anti-social and criminal activities.

Mr. Hanyabui said the plight of street children became important to him in 1999 when he first came to Accra and had no place to sleep and had to join a group of unknown people to sleep at Tudu lorry station.

He observed that many children went through a lot of suffering on the streets whilst they struggled to make ends meet and put a roof over their head and therefore should be of much concern to society.

Dr. Hollywood said he always went back to the street to support such children and so visited market places at Agbogbloshie, Makola, Tema station, Mallam Atta, Dome and Madina at midnight just to see how these vulnerable children slept, and on one such routine he was shocked by the plight of a woman with a three-day-old baby sleeping on a bare floor. 

He informed that the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) constituted a bold new approach to children’s rights, which required governments to assume new commitments to helping street children.

“Ghana signed the convention of the right of the child on 29th January 1990, and one week later on February 5th 1990, Ghana became the first country in the world to ratify the treaty, committing to adopt it into national law. But 30 years on, governments have not guaranteed street children access to their basic human rights,” it added.

Save the street movie focuses on Amavi, a 13 years old girl, whose dreams of becoming a medical doctor is shattered after her Aunty maltreats her and finally drives her onto the street because of Gh¢60.00.

It chronicles the life of Amavi as the lead cast and four other supporting characters (Iyshatu, Nyamekye and Shatta Lady) as they hustle on the streets of Accra.

As with many street children, Amavi makes friends on the street and one of such friends is Iyshatu who also had to run from her village in the northern part of Ghana, because at age 11, her father wanted to marry her off to a 62-year-old man.

"And Nyamekye also at a tender age of nine (9) has become the only parent to his three younger siblings after the demise of their mother, knocked down by a motorist whiles hawking on the street," it said.

GNA

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