Leslee Udwin is a BAFTA and multi-award winning filmmaker, actress, director, producer and a human rights activist. Her documentary India’s Daughter has been critically acclaimed around the globe, winning 32 awards (including the Peabody Award and the Amnesty International Media Award) and sparked a global movement to end violence against women and girls. The searing insights yielded by the two and a half year journey of making this film led Leslee to shift her focus from filmmaking and devote herself to Think Equal, a non-profit organization she has founded to introduce social and emotional intelligence learning to children between the ages of 3–6 years. For her humanitarian work, Leslee has received many prestigious awards including Activism in Arts and Education award from the UN Women for Peace Association, The Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award, and was voted by the New York Times the. No 2 Most Impactful Woman of 2015, second to Hillary Clinton.

In a world teeming with division and discord, can emotional and social intelligence, sown early in the fertile minds of children, grow into a force strong enough to unite the world while dismantling past prejudices? Is it possible that our greatest teachers could be the youngest among us, those whose innocence and capacity for love remain pure? What drove a celebrated filmmaker to abandon a successful career, take on a fresh new challenge of pioneering reform in global education, and seek to create positive life outcomes for all future generations?

This episode of Intersections Podcast invites you on a journey with Leslee Udwin, from the depths of suffering and personal adversity, sparking global movements through powerful, cinematic storytelling, to the forefront of a movement aimed at transforming early childhood education on a global scale, exclusively in conversation with Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa.

“If we genuinely take seriously that we have a duty of care, to our youngest children being the most vulnerable citizens in our society, how on earth can we say it's compulsory for them to learn numeracy? That it's compulsory for them to learn how to read and how to write, but it's optional for them to learn how to value another human being?”

Leslee Udwin

This episode offers key insights on:

• One fundamental competency that sticks like glue with all others to co-create a more unified and compassionate world

• Stories that illuminate how the youngest among us can become agents of positive change and transform outcomes for adults

• Pivotal experiences that compelled her to abandon a successful career in filmmaking and take on the challenge of pioneering reform in global education

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