Australian Story – Absolute Beginner

Clip 2: A project about kids

Taken from the TV program Australian Story – Absolute Beginner (2006)

Original title classification PG – this clip chosen to be PG

Curator’s clip description

Marg is now involved in a very different mission, in charge of looking after street kids in a provincial Chinese city. She lives in an apartment and travels to work on a bus. It’s a far cry from her African assignments and yet, with 200 million vagrants in China, many of them children, she’s taken on the job of her life.

Curator’s notes

Australian Story has been able to film Marg at key moments of her new life and the camera is with her as she finds her feet in China. It’s like a longitudinal study of her new life and work and immensely satisfying for that as we see her grow in stature as a person and in her work.

There is some great camerawork of the chinese landscape, and the director is able to capture Marg’s obvious empathy with the children she works with. Her pleasure in the last moment as she recalls securing the schooling for the homeless children is very moving.

Janet Bell, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows Margaret Ward in the Chinese city of Baoji in the province of Shaanxi where she worked as a volunteer for Medecins Sans Frontieres. Marg describes her reactions to Chinese society and discusses her position as the coordinator of a ‘street kids’ centre while images of the Great Wall and other historic landmarks are shown and Chinese music plays. Images of homeless children and footage of Marg visiting a vocational school follow. The clip concludes with Marg describing her success in securing placements at the school as ‘just beautiful’.

Educational value points

In this clip, Marg is working as a volunteer for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors Without Borders), a humanitarian, non-government organisation (NGO) that provides medical aid to developing countries. Most of its funding is derived from public donations. Its aim is to ‘provide essential medical-humanitarian aid to those who need it most, regardless of race, religion, gender or political affiliation’ (http://www.msf.org.au).

MSF was established on 22 December 1971 by a group of 12 French doctors led by Dr Bernard Kouchner (at time of writing France’s Foreign Minister). During the 1967–70 Nigeria–Biafra civil war the doctors became frustrated by the level of bureaucracy and government intervention and as a result they became interested in establishing a humanitarian aid organisation that would be independent of government agendas.

Marg Ward is one of approximately 3,000 volunteers sent to work on emergency medical programs by MSF each year. MSF recruits general practitioners, specialist doctors and nurses, surgeons, midwives, medical scientists and public health and nutrition experts as well as finance, administration and logistics professionals. Age limits do not apply to MSF (Marg says in the clip that she is 63) and placements last for an average of six months.

In March 2001 MSF and the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs in Baoji opened the Baoji Children’s Centre, where Marg worked. The Children’s Centre was established to provide homeless children with food, education, medical and psychological attention and temporary accommodation. It also worked to reunite children with their families. In 2006 MSF withdrew from Baoji and handed over the management of the Children’s Centre to a local NGO.

According to MSF, children are living on the streets throughout China because their families often reject them or they choose to leave home because they experience ‘neglect, abuse, hunger and social rejection’ (http://www.msf.org). The size of this underclass is mentioned in the clip as being about 200 million people, ‘many of whom are children’. China’s one-child policy and a cultural preference for male offspring may also play a part.

Chinese music is played throughout the clip to evoke the setting and establish the mood. At the beginning of the clip the music is cheerful but there is a distinct change in tone when the voice-over mentions the ‘200 million people who are basically vagrants in China’. Here the strings set a more sombre tone. The music regains an optimistic mood towards the end of the clip, reflecting the sentiments in Marg’s closing comments.

The clip is taken from an episode of Australian Story, which is produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is aired weekly. Each 30-minute episode focuses on an individual Australian who tells her or his own story. The first program was aired in 1996 and the series has won seven Walkley Awards and four TV Week Logie Awards.