Girls are often brought to us with ragged clothes and sadness in their eyes. Some are as young as three or four and some have lived on streets their entire lives. Some do not know how old they are; others do not even know their names.
They may have been forced into begging on the streets by the beggar mafia that exploits young children. Some have been purposely maimed to make them "better" beggars. Or they might be the children of commercial sex workers, runaways, children from broken families that cannot adequately care for them. Often, they have been exposed to physical and moral exploitation.
They are only children but they have seen too much deprivation for their young lives.
In our care, they are quickly incorporated into a loving community and their physical, educational, medical and moral needs are addressed. It is remarkable to see how happy they become in just a short period of time under these favourable circumstances.
We will care for these girls until they are reunited with a family member who can care for them, or if there is no family member, we will educate them and prepare them for life. No girl is ever turned away. No girl is abandoned. We will care for them until they are married or otherwise settled in life, sometimes this is a period of fifteen or more years.
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Our emphasis is to provide excellent education for children who would otherwise not have this opportunity. We seek to serve the poorest of the poor, for whom an education is the only way the cycle of poverty can be broken.
Our schools are co-educational, again with the emphasis on reaching out to poor children and their families. We have schools with grades from kindergarten to 10th standard, when basic education in India is complete. We also have junior colleges and technical training schools that provide a wide range of educational options: business, computers, medical transcription, secretarial, fashion design among them.
If a girl has the aptitude we will send her on to higher education at an appropriate university. We also send girls to nurses’ training, hospitality courses, and various vocational schools.
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In outlying villages, education – especially for girls – is inadequate, and often non-existent. These village girls work long hours as field laborers, beginning when they are just six or seven, earning the equivalent of .50 or $1 day. Without an education, they will continue to do this, marry, and have children who face a similar future. The Wrenching Choice: Field or Classroom
Our sisters travel to these villages and meet with mothers, telling them about our schools and the opportunity an education can afford their daughters. It is a difficult decision for these poor mothers, as the child is a wage-earner and helps to support the family. The sisters offer to board the girls at one of our schools and educate them. The girls are provided very simple lodging – usually sleeping on the floor on straw mats in a dormitory – and as healthy a diet as the sisters can provide with their limited means.
We board hundreds of girls and provide them with an education. We also offer room and board in our hostels at a very modest rate to poor working girls who come into the major cities for employment. Otherwise the girls may be exploited by unscrupulous landlords who take what little money they earn, so they return to their village often no better than when they left.
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