Tommy's Tags

Topic of Choice – The forgotten children of India

I'm giving gifts I bought to the children in Chennai orphanage

Building the Rajasthan children's home

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Topic of Choice – The forgotten children of India

For my topic of choice I decided to raise a bit of awareness for the work I do in India. I’m on the board of directors for a children’s charity called Sharing Hands, in which I raise funds and build orphanages for the children’s charity. I also encourage people to sponsor children in the orphanages, €15/month pays for their food, clothing, school bag and books and education. We now have homes in many states throughout India catering for over a 1,000 children. I try and visit the orphanages every year, take a look at any new projects and see the needs of the children.

I’ve also worked on projects in the slum areas of Mumbai, with the people who live on the rubbish dump and along the sewer pipes, and also with the people who live under plastic sheets along the railway lines. The last orphanage I build was in the mountains of Rajasthan. This is the only desert state in India and has the world famous Thar desert which has rippling sand dunes that keep you mesmerised. Even on the streets of the towns I’ve seen camels and elephants walking on the roads alongside cars.

Rescued Rajasthan children with gifts

New orphanage been built in Andhra Pradesh

All the children we placed into the Rajasthan children’s home are rescued children. We rescued them from factories, quarries and even a zinc smelting plant. Initially the owners refused to hand over any children to us, but eventually they gave us the children who were dying because they were of no use to them anymore. These children were so sick and were unable to walk, so they had to be carried out to the vehicle and be brought to hospital.

All these children were between 5 and 10 years old and each child had to spend 1 month in hospital before they were well enough to move into their new home. We built the home up in the mountains to make it more difficult for their former owners to track them down and bring them back to servitude. And another advantage to the location is that there is a school right across the road from the home. All the children have their own school uniforms, bags and books and they are now the most wonderful happy children you could ever meet. After the first year of opening, the home was full, so by the following year we had to rent a house in a town 2 hours drive away to put more rescued children into. A year later we were rescuing children from child prostitution. But that’s another story, maybe for another blog.

Children in Andhra Pradesh with gifts I bought them

Girl in Andhra Pradesh with new skipping rope

In some of these photographs you will see children receiving gifts, and for many of them it’s the first gifts they have ever received in their lives. But this blog is not about me, its about the children in need of someone to love them and care about them. I've over 70 people sponsoring children and none of them have ever gone to India. But in the letters that they get from the children every year, the children refer to them as father or mother, because they know that these people love them, and that is so important to an orphan child – to know that someone loves and cares for them.