Galen Films raises funds to complete film about children and poverty

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Len and Georgia Morris during filming of "The Same Heart." — Photo courtesy of Galen Films

The filmmaking team of Len and Georgia Morris of Vineyard Haven are turning to the Internet to help raise funds to complete their latest documentary film, “The Same Heart,” which has been six years in the making. They are using the crowd-funding platform Indiegogo to raise the money. Their online fundraising is now live and will run for 45 days.

The goal is to raise $70,000 for editing and mixing the final music for the film. The film is scheduled to be completed this fall according to a press release from Galen Films, the Morrises’ production company.

Galen Films also announced a website for the new film last week, thesameheart.com. Now in post-production, it is their third film in the series about children’s rights.

The first was “Stolen Childhoods,” a film about forced child labor. The second, “Rescuing Emmanuel,” was about a 13-year-old Kenyan street boy, whose story mirrors the lives of millions of children living and dying on the streets of the world. The trilogy has been 10 years in the making.

“The Same Heart” proposes a way to lift a billion children out of poverty by taxing the global financial sector to provide consistent funding for food and medicine. The film follows a committed Kenyan community organizer, Geoffrey Bakhuya, who sees the challenges of helping children as the calling of his life.

It shows his family life in rural Western Kenya and his work developing community-based projects and health services in Kibera, the most notorious slum in Nairobi.

“An idea is powerful. We should each be our brother’s keeper,” Mr. Bakhuya says. “If each of us shares the same heart to help children, we are like drops of water that become a great river. There’s power in numbers.”

The film also includes interviews with seven Nobel Peace laureates, economists, parents, children, and heads of state. They share the idea that all children deserve a chance at a promising future.

A companion social impact campaign will aim to advance The Robin Hood Tax, a small levy on the global financial sector could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to help children in poverty, one transaction at a time.

The financing for the film goes through Media Voices for Children, a nonprofit established by the Morrises and others in 2009 to raise public awareness about the impact of poverty and globalization on the world’s children via video, interactive media, documentary films, and organizations and journalists around the world.

Visit the Indiegogo campaign at

igg.me/at/thesameheartfilm/x/3452743.