"What happened to Esther?" is a feature-length
documentary about the lives of HIV+ orphans in Nepal,
told through my journey to Nepal to find Esther,
a 10 year old Nepali orphan girl who was displaced from her orphanage.

The 2010 UNAIDS Global Report, estimates, that in
2009, 64 000 people in Nepal were living with HIV. It
also stated that 1 000 000 orphans were due to AIDS
across South and South-East Asia, double the amount
since 2001. That same year, approximately 4700 adults
and children died of AIDS related deaths in Nepal. We will
look into the care and prevention that took place to maintain
her health.

It is illegal to adopt orphans from Nepal because
a lot of these children still have parents. Toddlers like Anu,
another orphan from this same orphanage, was
returned to her parents, as they sought her out after
she was kidnapped from them and ended up in the care
of this orphanage. Esther may have been told that her parents died from AIDS. Some of the children are told that theyʼre parents have died so that they believe they are orphans.

In Nepal, due to the high rate of child thefts, some of
the orphanages are simply the holding place for
children before they are sold into the sex trade. If this
becomes Estherʼs outcome, we will look into the
organizations that are put into place to facilitate and
free these children out of sex slavery, like the Umbrella Foundation, Maiti Nepal and NGN.

These are some of the possibilities to the outcome of this documentary. Please help me help Esther by voting for this documentary.

Thank you! For your support!