Lindsay Lohan - Can Make a Difference in India?

Lindsay Lohan’s reputation with that of Mother Teresa’s, they now do have one thing in common: Concern for the underprivileged in India.

The BBC recently released a trailer previewing its documentary, Lindsay Lohan in India, which follows the actress’s week long visit in December to the subcontinent. Her intent: To investigate the trafficking of women and children. According to the BBC, during her journey Lohan meets young boys who work 16-hour days for pitiful wages, under the constant threat of beatings. In Kalkata, she visits a shelter where young girls promised work as maids were instead forced into brothels. She also encounters a reformed trafficker who once lured girls away from their families.

To find out why a parent would send a child away to work, the 23-year old star also travels to rural West Bengal, a painfully impoverished province. In the trailer it’s clear that Lohan is searching for answers and confused by what she encounters. Confronting a mother who allowed traffickers to take her daughter away, Lohan, dressed demurely in a black headscarf, asks her through a translator: “Didn’t you hear from other traffickers that children were abused? And that some girls were raped and prostituted and subjected to horrible things?”

It’s hard to know what prompted Lohan to crusade for human rights in India, opting for brothel visits and salwar kameezes over L.A. nightclubs and Gucci handbags for seven long days. But dozens of bloggers and posters have snickered at the thought of reformed party girl Lohan picking her way past cow paddies and communing with the poor folk of India. Of Lohan’s crusade, one Internet commentator wrote: “I am sick of these spoiled stars exploiting the poor to improve their own PR.”

Lohan’s mom, Dina Lohan, for one, is convinced that the trip has improved the life of at least one person – namely, her daughter.

"It was an amazing, life-changing experience for her," Lindsay's mom, Dina, told PEOPLE magazine "I'm so proud of Lindsay, that under all the scrutiny the tabloids put her under, she is a very strong, caring, talented girl who ignores all the negative, and continues to move forward in a positive direction. I am so proud of her."