The poor are all around you in India. Unlike in the UK where poverty is relatively hidden, here it literally screams at you in the face every where you turn!
There are some horrendous statistics about the poor in India: an estimated 450 million live on less than 50 rupees a day ( about 80 pence) and 75% of population of the country live on less than 100 rupees a day! One third of the worlds poor live here and 22,000 children die everyday due to poverty. 56% have no access to electricity. Only 40% are functionally literate and 30% are illiterate!
The real challenge about living here day by day is working out how best to respond to the poor. The danger is that over time your heart can become hardened to the needs of the poor and so you just brush them aside and ignore what is going on. Many,many people live like that here because they have been brought up seeing poverty around them all their lives. We really need to have God's compassion for the poor. Jesus demonstrated God's heart as he constantly reached out to the beggars, the lepers and the prostitutes and that is the challenge for us today.
Giving money is not always the best solution as many of the children are in organised gangs and the money goes straight to the leader and doesn't benefit the child. Also a lot of the children would rather just use the money to buy solvents which take away the hunger pains! Giving food is a better way but food that is opened and cannot be sold on. Another way to help is to get involved in the many NGO organisations around the city
Tim and I went on a tour organised by the Salaam Baalak Trust, an organisation that rescues street kids and helps to give them a home and education. We were taken around the parts of the city where the street kids hang out , like the railway stations etc and shown the contact points and one of the boys homes. A former street child, now a worker for the trust, described life on the streets and it was very moving! For girls it is especially tough as there are not so many jobs they can do and they are a lot more vulnerable than boys. He said that girls as young as 7 were taken into prostitution and a young girl could have up to 45 clients a day!! Many die by the age of 16 from pain and trauma.
Yesterday a friend and I went to visit a girls shelter home to see if we could get involved in some way. The home houses 55 girls at present who have been rescued from the streets. The youngest is 5 years up to 18 . The home was in a pleasant , leafy street and very well organised but it did remind me a little of a prison because it had a central atrium going up to the roof with walkways on different levels with rooms going off them One of the older girls showed us round . I commented on the girls excellent English to the manager and she told us that the girl and her sister had been adopted by an American family from am orphanage and taken to Boston but they had struggled with her and sent her back but had kept her sister! They had found her abandoned on the streets. The girls's day is highly structured with chores and schooling and other workshop activities. Some girls go to the local school but most are schooled in the centre as they are too far behind to go to the mainstream school. The older girls are also encouraged to learn a trade such a hairdressing or dressmaking etc.
Both my friend ( who is a doctor and also called Liz!)) and myself are very keen to volunteer there, so as from next week my friend is going to work with the teenage girls on health issues and I am going to teach English to the younger ones to try to prepare them for school. How exciting!
There are some horrendous statistics about the poor in India: an estimated 450 million live on less than 50 rupees a day ( about 80 pence) and 75% of population of the country live on less than 100 rupees a day! One third of the worlds poor live here and 22,000 children die everyday due to poverty. 56% have no access to electricity. Only 40% are functionally literate and 30% are illiterate!
The real challenge about living here day by day is working out how best to respond to the poor. The danger is that over time your heart can become hardened to the needs of the poor and so you just brush them aside and ignore what is going on. Many,many people live like that here because they have been brought up seeing poverty around them all their lives. We really need to have God's compassion for the poor. Jesus demonstrated God's heart as he constantly reached out to the beggars, the lepers and the prostitutes and that is the challenge for us today.
Giving money is not always the best solution as many of the children are in organised gangs and the money goes straight to the leader and doesn't benefit the child. Also a lot of the children would rather just use the money to buy solvents which take away the hunger pains! Giving food is a better way but food that is opened and cannot be sold on. Another way to help is to get involved in the many NGO organisations around the city
Tim and I went on a tour organised by the Salaam Baalak Trust, an organisation that rescues street kids and helps to give them a home and education. We were taken around the parts of the city where the street kids hang out , like the railway stations etc and shown the contact points and one of the boys homes. A former street child, now a worker for the trust, described life on the streets and it was very moving! For girls it is especially tough as there are not so many jobs they can do and they are a lot more vulnerable than boys. He said that girls as young as 7 were taken into prostitution and a young girl could have up to 45 clients a day!! Many die by the age of 16 from pain and trauma.
Yesterday a friend and I went to visit a girls shelter home to see if we could get involved in some way. The home houses 55 girls at present who have been rescued from the streets. The youngest is 5 years up to 18 . The home was in a pleasant , leafy street and very well organised but it did remind me a little of a prison because it had a central atrium going up to the roof with walkways on different levels with rooms going off them One of the older girls showed us round . I commented on the girls excellent English to the manager and she told us that the girl and her sister had been adopted by an American family from am orphanage and taken to Boston but they had struggled with her and sent her back but had kept her sister! They had found her abandoned on the streets. The girls's day is highly structured with chores and schooling and other workshop activities. Some girls go to the local school but most are schooled in the centre as they are too far behind to go to the mainstream school. The older girls are also encouraged to learn a trade such a hairdressing or dressmaking etc.
Both my friend ( who is a doctor and also called Liz!)) and myself are very keen to volunteer there, so as from next week my friend is going to work with the teenage girls on health issues and I am going to teach English to the younger ones to try to prepare them for school. How exciting!
Hi,
ReplyDeleteIt's wonderful to see that you want to get involved and make a difference. It's really inspiring to see people stepping away from just commenting about the heartbreaking poverty and taking that leap to helping out as much as they can.
My friends and I are also looking for orphanages to volunteer at. What is the name of this girl's shelter home? Or perhaps you can give us an address, so we can also contac them?
The homes are part of the salaam Baalak trust,
ReplyDeleteTheir website is www.salaambaalaktrust.com.
If you go on there you will find more information about the homes and how you can volunteer.