An award-winning documentary film made by a Bermudian-based production company has become the springboard for an ambitious project to provide prosthetic limbs for workers injured in India’s textile industry.

The Price of Cheap, by Wishing Step Pictures, won 20 awards on the festival circuit after its release in 2019.

It tells the stories of modern slaves hidden in fashion supply chains, and features Ajay Kumar, who lost a limb at the age of 14 while working in a cotton-ginning mill.

Bermudian-based Kim Carter and Toronto-based Zabi Yaqeen are the cofounders of Wishing Step and of The Abolish Foundation, which was set up to encourage people to take action regarding the issues raised in the film.

They were introduced to 17-year-old Mr Kumar by labour rights activist Sudhir Katiyar, director of the Centre for Labour Research and Action, while in India for the filming of The Price of Cheap.

Mr Carter promised to arrange a prosthetic limb for Mr Kumar, and TAF, in collaboration with Pooja Mukul, a doctor who directs the Jaipur Foot Rehabilitation Centre, gave Mr Kumar a myoelectric arm, and the support he needed to rebuild his life.

Since then, Mr Kumar has opened a shop to support his family, is hiring workers and is the breadwinner of his family.

Mr Carter said: “Thanks to Ajay’s courage and attitude towards life, The Abolish Foundation would like to use his example and ‘rinse and repeat’.”

In 2023, TAF launched The Healing Project to provide prosthetics and support to amputees from extremely underprivileged backgrounds.

Mr Katiyar identified five more people in need — and earlier this year, more people received prosthetics as part of a sophisticated four-year programme designed by TAF that includes assessment, fitting of a prosthetic and annual testing as well as counselling.

Now, the team behind The Healing Project is aiming to scale the project countrywide.

Mr Carter said: “Our ambition is to increase the number of recipients from five, then from 100, and then thousands.

“Forty million people are in need of a prosthetic in the developing world, according to the World Health Organisation, but only 5 to 15 per cent of those people get some kind of support.

“Four people in Bermuda, and two abroad, funded those first five recipients — I consider these people the founders of The Healing Project.

“Now, I want an international company based in Jaipur to scale the project. We are not talking about a lot of money — it cost $49,000 for all seven patients who have now received prosthetics, and that is for four years so it’s just $12,250 a year for seven patients.

“We can start in Jaipur, and then take it all over India.”

Mr Carter added: “Providing a prosthetic is so tangible, and it doesn’t just impact one person. It impacts the whole family and sometimes the whole village.

“In Ajay’s case, the whole village has benefited by doing this one simple thing.”

Mr Carter will speak about The Healing Project at Tuesday’s meeting of the Hamilton Rotary Club.