OU on the BBC: A Mile in their Shoes - About the programme

Production team

Three presenters, three continents and three of the poorest countries in the world. In A Mile In Their Shoes, a Sport Relief documentary, Nick Knowles, Patrick Kielty and Victoria Beckham go on extraordinary journeys to follow the incredibly tough lives of three children in Zambia, India and Peru.

Victoria Beckham travels to Peru to meet 11-year-old Dinah – who lives and works on a rubbish tip. Of the quarter of a million children working in Peru’s capital, Lima, 80% are under the age of 12. In rural areas the situation is no better with a huge 62% of rural school-aged children suffering from malnutrition.

Dinah’s mum died 3 years ago and she lives and works with her dad on a rubbish tip. Dinah sifts through years of compacted and burnt rubbish to find bits of old glass, metal and even animal bones – anything they can sell. It’s no place for children and the local clinic is full of kids with stomach and lung problems, fungal infections and parasites.

As Victoria says, Dinah is just a child like any other. She’s bright and she works incredibly hard in the most unfair of circumstances. She deserves a better life than this.

Nick Knowles goes to Zambia to meet Joseph – an orphan who has lost both his parents to AIDS. Just 11 years old, he’s the breadwinner and has to look after his three younger brothers, his frail 83 year old grandfather and his two year old sister, Florence.

When Nick arrived the family was facing another crisis – an AIDS test for little Florence, because she was born just weeks after her mother died of the disease. Initial tests showed she had her mother’s antibodies, but now that she’s two she can be properly tested to see if she is HIV positive.

And Patrick Kielty travels down the east coast of India with 10 year old Vijay – one of India’s thousands of vagrant ‘railway children’.Vijay left home two years ago and has been living rough as one of India’s thousands of ‘railway’ children ever since. He sleeps rough on the platforms and makes the best living he can sweeping the trains and begging for money from passengers.

He left home because he felt a burden on his family because there simply wasn’t enough money to feed the three children. Many families in India live close to starvation and Vijay’s family is no exception. Since Vijay left, however, his family have spent every spare penny trying to find him.

Patrick’s is a magical journey – because, with the help of Sport Relief money a project called ‘New Hope’ is managing to reunite some ‘railway children’ with their families. Patrick goes with Vijay on an extraordinarily emotional journey, from his life on the railways to the chance to start over.

The documentary heralds ‘Sport Relief’ – sibling of Comic Relief and will hit our TV screens on 27th June at 6.35pm as part of the ‘Go The Extra Mile’ campaign which culminates on 10th July.

First broadcast: Sunday 27 Jun 2004 on BBC ONE

A Mile in their Shoes in more depth: