Lion is a drama and biographical film directed by Garth Davis. It stars Dev Patel and well-known actors such as David Wenham and Nicole Kidman. It was released in 2016 and received excellent reviews worldwide, besides giving a great message.

    The film tells the story of Saroo, a boy from India who lived in a very difficult situation in poverty with his older brother and his mom. Saroo got lost in a train when he was barely five years old. This train led him to live very difficult experiences for a child, being captive to strangers with bad intentions, living on the street, to spend days without food, until he arrived at an orphanage in a city far from his home, with no one being able to recognize him since he did not know where he lived or his own last name.

    The story shows us scenes between the present, Saroo in his 30s, and the past, where it evidences everything that this little boy had to go through to survive and end up in a good place. Saroo could go to school and a prestigious university in Australia, thanks to the fact that, at the orphanage, a wealthy Australian couple read his story and adopted him when he was still a child.

    Throughout the film, we see how Saroo, as an adult, slowly remembers everything that happened when he was little, which he had mostly forgotten, and searches for his home. Incredibly, this is a real-life case because, through Google Earth, Saroo could remember the path he took every day with his brother to his home and was able to find his mother, after 25 years.

    In this movie, you can see everything that children go through in orphanages in poor countries: poor food, low-quality health services, poor education, and rarely end up being adopted.

    I would like to highlight a line from Saroo's adoptive mother, Sue: "There are too many people in the world, having a child of my own wasn't going to guarantee that things were going to be better, but adopting a child in suffering, giving him a chance, that was better and was going to make a positive change in the world." It is a film full of lessons and invites us to reflect on how fortunate we are and the ability we have to help children in such a vulnerable situation as abandonment.

    This happens all over the world and the idea is to raise awareness of this situation and, if possible, collaborate to generate a change. In the film, we see everything that can happen to children in situations of abandonment, living on the streets, or in orphanages, and it still leaves us with uncertainty: Is there anything we can do to change this?

    Fundación Esperanza Contigo invites you to take action and generate that change. The welfare of abandoned children is in everyone's hands, and you can make a difference. We have many ways in which you can get involved. Don't hesitate and join us.