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Income For India's Children
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Most people in the U.S. see chalk as a simple tool used in classrooms. But in India, chalk has become a product that could help stem some of the crushing poverty in cities. Reed Galin reports on a program that teaches abandoned children new skills to survive. |
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SCRIPT:
(Locator: Mumbai, India)
You’re looking at just ordinary white school chalk…but the story behind
it is anything but ordinary.
It starts here on the streets of Mumbai (“mom-bye”), India, a city of
300,000 homeless children. A few hundred take refuge at a shelter run by
the Methodist Church in India. Here, the children learn to make
chalk…plaster of Paris, china clay, and just the right measure of water.
It is poured into molds to dry in the sun. A day’s work for the children
is about 300 sticks of chalk.
Roseamme George/Community Outreach Program Director: “A hundred chalks,
they cost 20 rupees. That is maybe a few cents in the U.S.”
Abandoned, orphaned, or runaway children like Anandraj, homeless since
age 5, are learning a trade.
Roseamme George/Community Outreach Program Director: “He had to run away
from his home because he was mistreated by his stepfather. His father
passed away and later he was harassed by his stepfather.”
Escaping violence at home, on the streets of India, many children fall
into prostitution and child labor in their struggle to survive. Program
director Rosamme George looks after the children.
Roseamme George/Community Outreach Program Director: “So to save them
out, that’s why we are trying to bring them to us, the center, where we
can put them into such trades where children are occupied and free, away
from what’s happening around them.”
Building on what they learn here, the children at this shelter hope to
go on to master more advanced trades. Roseamme only wishes more children
could be saved…but funds are limited.
Roseamme George/Community Outreach Program Director: “We are trying to
do the best we can with our resources.”
TAG:
The shelter in Mumbai (Bombay) provides shelter and education to
approximately 500 street children each year. The program depends on
donations and the continued support of the United Methodist Committee on
Relief (UMCOR). To learn more about the program, call
800-554-8583 or go to:
http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/full_article.cfm?articleid=2921.