Sharing Hope. Nurturing Transformation.
“What will happen to her after this year?” That was her mother. “I don’t know,” replied her father. “We were fortunate that this kindergarten school was open to her. Most are not, and even those that might allow our people charge so high that we would never be able to pay.”
Vanti checked her remaining coin and slowly counted up the total before removing five from her hand. That was all she had left except for the two still clutched tightly in her fist.
His tone changed as he said this last, growing sharper. “Don’t deny it. You’re one of them. We don’t serve your kind here. Get out!” Somwati’s lip trembled as she turned away, but she did not cry.
“Watch out Nana!” Her father bellowed as the six-year-old rushed through the doorway, nearly bowling over her mother and father in her energetic haste. Her clothes were all amok, and her dark hair streaked with sand. A bright smile lit her face.
Payal comes from the Dalit Community. ‘Dalit’ is a class of people in India often known as the ‘Untouchables,’ but they call themselves ‘Dalit’ which means ‘the broken people.’ They are the lowest and most poverty-stricken class in India and are often frequent targets for injustice.
Global Helps Network has produced 25 bio-sand water filter units in partnership with the Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST) and we are looking to build more this coming year.
Shama comes from a non-Hindu family, her family is extremely poor, and often they do not have two proper meals a day. Her sister was sick, and when she heard about prayers, she brought her to our center for prayer. God healed her sister, and it impacted the life of Shama. She was also one of the best students in our sewing group. Along with tailoring, she learned how to stitch bags, her stitching is excellent, and her finishing is skillful.
At present India is facing a massive problem of unemployment and under-employment, micro-finance is the way forward to provide jobs or self-employment to these people. The tricky part of helping the poor micro-finance is knowing and working with people we can trust. We have developed those relationships over the past decade and are looking to carry out several of these micro-loans in the coming years.
It was all so new to them. The teachers were kind and patient as they learned their letters and how to read and write them correctly. New topics like addition, multiplication and division continued to draw their interest. They learned at a phenomenal rate and their favorite question when looking at a building or the rare vehicle was always, “How does it work?”
Sria’s husband was taken to pull bricks out of the searing heat of the kiln, leaving her the grueling work of fitting hundreds of new blocks into their molds for the sun to bake dry. He tried to stay as long as he could, knowing their pay rested on how many bricks they turned out each day, but in the end, he didn’t have a choice.