An innovative initiative to rehabilitate the thousands of children who arrive in the big cities every year in search of a better life and end up living on the streets neglected, malnourished and addicted to drugs.
India can be a very dire place for children. Being forced to work from an early age, deprived of education and mistreated, many kids leave home and board trains and buses to the big cities into an even more uncertain future. Girls especially flee from their homes in order to avoid marriage [often parents force their daughters to marry older men when they reach puberty]. Unfortunately life in the city does not turn out to be the salvation these children had hoped for. Girls are often abused, abducted, forced into prostitution or even killed. Boys band together and try to make their living by rag picking. Or worse still, they are forced to work for established gangs. They sleep on the streets and railway platforms, rummage through rubbish to find food and sniff glue in order to escape the abysmal reality of their young lives. ssss
With an estimated 18 million kids on the street, India has the highest concentration of street children in the world. And the number is growing. One daring charity is trying to do something about this in the city of Hyderabad, where according to some estimates there are around 40,000 street children. Their program is based on an integrated approach, which includes the government, the police as well as other local NGOs. They have established help desks at all the major entry points in the city and man the bus and railway stations with trained volunteers. The aim is to offer help and support to all the newcomers, preventing them from entering the vicious cycle of street life, exploitation and drug addiction. The program has established two new homes to which arriving children are immediately referred. Depending on the wishes of the children the organization then mediates with the family or finds a permanent home for them with guaranteed care and education. The program is hugely successful and is attracting nationwide attention as a role model for other cities.