The Water World International Children’s Film festival 2012 will start tomorrow in the Vietnam’s northern province of Hoa Binh, featuring 14 films made by and for children after three months of toddling with the aid of ChildFund organization.

Eight of them are produced by Vietnamese children and the rest are by children of Australia, Laos, Timor-Leste, and Sri Lanka. All focus on the world of water as what they perceive. The films also show what water means to children in different parts of the world – from the silly to the surprising to the serious ideas.

Through the films, over 700 children from the Asia-Pacific region manifest how water plays in their life. It also shows children’s creativeness in expressing this to their peers overseas by using pocket video cameras.

A common message to the world is that water connects all of us, wherever we live in the world. Clean water is a universal human right. Water can mean work, play, weather, life. It can be scary or fun, life-saving or dangerous. It’s so much a part of our everyday lives in so many different ways.

2013 is also the United Nations International Year of Water Cooperation. With awareness-raising events taking place across the world, the Water World film project provides an opportunity to add children’s voices to discussions around water issues nationally and internationally.

This project is part of the ChildFund Connect program which is partly funded by Australian Aid, managed by ChildFund Australia on behalf of AusAID.

The film project is what proceeds from the last year’s project “Our Goal” built and funded by the ChildFund International -- a global child development and protection agency serving more than 13.5 million children and their family members in 31 nations.