468 million children around the world are growing up in the shadow of war. They play no part in starting these conflicts, yet they’re always caught in the crossfire – forced to flee with little more than the clothes on their backs, stumbling over the wreckage of what was once home.
For refugees, this horror is raw and visceral. For others, it can feel distant and unimaginable. But behind the staggering statistics are real kids, families and communities.
Our mission was to capture the brutal way in which a child’s life is shattered by displacement, offering a glimpse into a reality many would otherwise never see. We strive to make the human cost impossible to ignore – in this case, a young girl who’s been torn from childhood and thrust into a desperate fight for her survival.
Like Save the Children’s humanitarian work, this project is rooted in authenticity, emotional resonance and child safeguarding. Rather than risk compromising the dignity of a real refugee, we chose to tell a deeply human story through actors’ performances.
Our in-house creative team collaborated with a production company in Poland, where Save the Children supports families displaced by the war in Ukraine. Drawing from their experiences, we carefully scouted locations to capture snapshots of a young girl’s journey to safety – starting just as the bombs begin to fall on her neighborhood. On Day 1, we watch her family pack their lives into knapsacks and flee. Even as the girl’s world unravels, moments of childlike innocence peek through: She turns back for her beloved teddy bear, clutches her mother’s hand for comfort and curiously examines an insect by flashlight.
By Day 19, they finally arrive at a refugee camp, but it isn’t until Day 94 when we see Nadia smile and say her name for the first time. Just as she finds her new normal, we cut to the start of another story: Somewhere else in the world, a cyclone rips at the walls of a different child’s shelter. Today is his Day 1.
This isn’t to diminish Nadia’s progress, but to remind us that childhood can shatter in an instant. Even as we work to help one child heal, another is on the brink of crisis. Through this lens, we aim to humanize the refugee crisis, highlight children’s resilience and inspire our audience to help the next child’s story end in hope – like Nadia’s has.
This project was just completed and released in market, so we don’t yet have hard metrics to measure its success. It has, however, been adapted into PSAs and Direct Response Television advertisements to raise awareness and inspire new supporters to take action.
The film has been incredibly well-received internally and is being leveraged widely across our Brand Marketing and Fundraising divisions. Most importantly, we’ve told an authentic, moving story about the trauma that millions of child refugees are forced to face every day.
