Airdates: No airdates currently scheduled.

Filmmaker Taghreed Elsanhouri was overtaken by events when she travelled to Sudan to make a film about the Mygoma orphanage in Khartoum. The Mygoma orphanage opened in 1961 and now takes in more than 30 babies each month either left on the gate or found at the streets.

This a response to the growing numbers of illegitimate babies being abandoned in Khartoum. It is estimated that about 1,500 babies are being abandoned every year in Khartoum. The orphanage is a lifeline for these children but with its limited resouces - funded by government grands and private donations - it has to let them go when they reach the age of five.

Those not adopted or fostered by then have to move on to much more crowded state institutions and face an uncertain future with much slimmer chances of adoption. And it is that fact which triggered Taghreed's move from a dispassionate filmmaker to a powerful engagement with Abdelsamih, a blind four-year-old. With every day she spends in the orphanage her relationship with Abdelsamih and the other kids deepens in ways she had not seen coming.

LEARN MORE:

View excerpts of other Witness episodes airing on Link TV

Visit Al Jazeera English

More on Witness from Al Jazeera

WATCH ONLINE

See Part 1 here:

See Part 2 here:

About Al Jazeera - Witness

Rageh Omaar presents Witness, a half-hour daily documentary series which features short, specially commissioned or acquired films gathered from independent filmmakers.
 
Each documentary reveals the unknown lives of ordinary people, following their lives, telling their stories and portraying the challenges that confront them. Our witnesses are people in a situation or those who have observed them first hand.
 
The films cover conflict, belief, the past and the future and as well as bringing new stories to light they showcase the talents of a new breed of multi-skilled, frontline journalist. In the studio, Rageh will further explore the issues raised in the films, with expert guests on the subject matter and the filmmakers themselves.