By JONAH LIPSKY

On August 3 Islanders have a rare opportunity to hear and see firsthand accounts of the atrocities of child homelessness and exploitation around the world — and what certain Vineyard people are doing about it.

Island filmmakers Len and Georgia Morris will be showing a short version of their latest film, Rescuing Emmanuel, which exposes childhood calamities, at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs starting at 8 p.m.

Rescuing Emmanuel is a movie about a street child in Nairobi, Kenya, who disrupted filmmakers Len and Georgia from the movie they were trying to shoot (Stolen Childhoods) by forcing his way into the sight of the camera and speaking his mind. His bright spirit and eagerness to make friends with them — as well as his insistence on his dream of one day going to school — grabbed Mrs. Morris, who became deeply moved and wanted to help him. The movie chronicles the filmmakers’ thoughts and feelings about Emmanuel as well as their attempts to move him off the streets to a place where he might grow up in more peace and with schooling.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with five Island activists who will describe what they are doing overseas for children and the destitute.

“We’ve noticed that there are a lot of people on this Island, from this tiny Island, who do a lot,” said Mr. Morris who has, along with Mrs. Morris, been pursuing children’s issues as filmmakers since 1998. “And we’ve not been able to include all of them in the event on August 3, but we’ve got some really wonderful examples of Islanders, year-round and seasonal who work for children.”

On the panel will be Todd Alexander, who has been building schools in Cambodia; Marti Wilson Taylor, who is the chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund USA; and Margaret Penicaud, who is in charge of the Fish Farm for Haiti Project. Georgia Morris will represent the Kenyan Education Fund. Moderating the event will be Laurie Perry-Henry, president of the Vineyard chapter of the NAACP.

Having such a diverse panel is congruent with the idea behind Media Voices for Children, which is the new Web site and nonprofit organization designed to bring together, indeed, Media Voices speaking for children’s rights, said Mr. Morris. He said that having these representatives can create a community discussion about what one person can do.

The evening will be to benefit the nonprofit organization media voices for Children. There will also be donation jars available for each of the organizations that the panelists represent.

The character of Emmanuel no doubt will permeate the event, partly because the movie Rescuing Emmanuel will be the centerpiece of the evening, but more profoundly because of what Emmanuel represents. The word Emmanuel means “God with us.”

“If you ask UNICEF they will say there are 100 million Emmanuels (street children) living on the streets of the world,” said Mr. Morris.

“I would hope that [people who see the movie] will see their children in Emmanuel. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who is interviewed in the movie, says, ‘These children are not statistics on a page. Don’t think of them as statistics on a page. Think of the face of a child you love, think of your own child.’ And that’s really the message of the film. That Emmanuel is not just this kid in Kenya. He’s everywhere,” said Ms. Morris.

Indeed, it is easy to believe that childhood exploitation does not occur in “our backyard,” but in fact, Mr. Morris said, we have the same problems of homelessness, food security and child labor in this country too.

“Children are more than half of the homeless population... one child out of five in the U.S. doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from. We have a problem with child labor in this country. We have those same problems right in this country,” he said.

There is perhaps reason for optimism in the resolution to increase substantially the global effort to eliminate the worst forms of child labor within six years, adopted at the Hague Global Child Labour Conference in May, although, with the exception of Hillary Clinton, who pledged $60 million from the United States, there was little discussion of funding. To Mr. Morris’s knowledge, resources have been and continue to be the most fundamental obstacle for these endeavors to end child labor, homelessness and hunger.

He said that if you look at the organizations which are dealing with any of the main issues of the poor and homeless (HIV, hunger, access to medical care, child labor), “they’re all going begging. And the global funding mechanisms for development and poverty reduction, basically at the end of the day are an elaborate system of passing the hat.”

This is a problem because these are the people who are advocating and working for the betterment of the children of the world. This is in stark contrast to financial organizations, for instance, which have huge sums of money and government interest in their propagation.

“You’ll never see the 100 million street children around the world organized and represented on K street [in Washington] in the way that the Chamber of Commerce or the Business Roundtable represents Goldman Sachs,” said Mr. Morris with a grimace.

He said the new Web site mediavoicesforchildren.org is designed to take up advocacy for children around the world. The Web site’s power will be drawn from the community that participates in it.

Mediavoicesforchildren.org has its roots in conferences that Mr. Morris has attended and shown footage at such as the Hague conference, as well as conferences hosted by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Department of Labor. At the Hague conference there were more than 450 delegates from 80 countries.

“It’s so important, while you’re jaw-boning, to remember why we are having the conversation,” said Mr. Morris of his experiences at those events. To him, showing 10 minutes of footage at such events as a recent State Department conference is key for the Media Voices organization.

“That footage ... puts the children in the room and it reminds us of the urgency of the matter and why we are gathered,” he said.

The Web site portion of Media Voices is a tremendous resource for someone looking to get a handle on the many facets of children’s rights and issues. Looking at any one particular organization’s site (such as UNICEF or the International Labor Organization) does not give a three-dimensional picture of the organizations representing these issues, said Mr. Morris.

“We’ve been up for less than a year and now there are 60 organizations and two dozen bloggers writing for the site. So that shows immediately a level of buy-in from the community that we are trying to create online,” he said.

The Web site contains a wide range of media, from blog posts, to the complete video interview with Desmond Tutu, to raw footage, to a library containing complete online copies of relevant documents such as the pending United States C.A.R.E. Act. Eventually, when Mr. and Mrs. Morris are once again in the field, they will be able to upload raw footage to the site immediately.

Despite the seemingly soundproof wall of bureaucracy that has come to pervade Washington there is reason to be optimistic, because the Obama sdministration seems to be working hard on these issues, Mr. Morris said. He takes from his experience in Washington that there is a large team of intelligent people who are working on reviewing U.S. policy with regards to many different facets of children’s issues. Still, it is embarrassing, said Mr. Morris, that the United States has not yet signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a sort of Universal Declaration of Human Rights for children — signed by 140 nations.

People need to take up the plight of the child around the world, he said, because they cannot speak for themselves; we have a special responsibility to them.

“You can’t just tell a five-year-old who is being raised on the street, ‘Hey, pick yourself up, go get a job, what’s your problem, straighten yourself out, look at you — you’re a mess, go get a shower, fix yourself a meal, you know, buck up.’ Doesn’t work. Doesn’t cut it,” Mr. Morris said. “A child that is hungry, we’re responsible to that child. You’d find that in any of the world’s great religions, you’d find that in any civilized society.”

Rescuing Emmanuel screens Tuesday at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs at 8 p.m. followed by a panel discussion with Island activists for children’s welfare.