Kids for Sale

Stacey Dooley’s first documentary series, broadcast in 2009, explores the issue of child labour. When Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts took Stacey to the cramped backstreet workshops of the Mumbai slums, she came face to face with child labour, and what she saw there changed her life.

In 2007, fashion fanatic Stacey Dooley's life took an unexpected turn when she travelled to India for Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts to live and work alongside the people in the Indian fashion industry making clothes for the UK high street. In the cramped backstreet workshops of the Mumbai slums she came face to face with child labour and what she saw there changed her life.

Now, Stacey embarks on two separate journeys, taking her into the heart of the child labour issue. She begins in Nepal, where tens of thousands of children, many under ten, are forced to leave their families to work in factories or within a form of domestic slavery. Stacey's mission is to try and find out how and why this can happen and if it's possible for her to make a difference.

In Kathmandu it is estimated that thousands of children work for wages. As the government clamps down on child labour in India more children are crossing the border to work in Nepal's embroidery and carpet factories. Stacey discovers children working in terrible conditions and for very little pay. She befriends a young boy who is beaten by his factory manager and helps him escape to the safety of a children's hostel.

Stacey meets children who have been sold into domestic slavery by their families, including a girl in her teens who was rescued three years ago and is now being looked after and educated in a hostel. With the aid of a charity Stacey joins her as she tries to save her 13-year-old sister from the same situation.