Educating street children

Working for the cause of underprivileged class of children and particularly educating them is altogether a different experience for Anneta Patel.

Patel's mother, who founded the 'Navjeewan Sanstha' in 2003 with a generous contribution from a Holland lady who had adopted two children from Nagpur at a time when foreign adoptions were allowed by the government.

The Holland national, Annelies Van de Ven returned to India when the two children grew up in an entirely different atmosphere. Moved by the plight of street and slum children, Anneta's mother Mrs I Wilkinson and Holland social worker took up seriously educating them.

"In India, street and slum children are that section of society needing help the most. Orphans belong to institutions which care for them. But street children by virtue of having a parent are no one's responsibility. But they are deprived of all the basic rights that any child should have education, proper nutrition, medical care and a safe clean environment," said Anneta Patel, who is the secretary of Navjeewan Sanstha.

Nav-Jeevan Sanstha was registered in 2003 with the Charity Commissioner. Annelies went around raising money in Holland for the project. The first step was that social workers went out to the slums and identified the children who needed help most. Most of their parents are rickshaw pullers, day labourers, rag pickers or beggars.

"Nav Jeewan found that the parents themselves are illiterate and have no value for education. Initially it took a lot of effort convincing the parents to send the child to us rather than let him or her beg on the street. Ultimately what convinced them was the free lunch being given to the child and the medical care given not only to the child but to the extended family," Anneta said.

"At the outset, the children were tought to read and write besides simple rules of hygiene. First thing the children did when they arrived was to wash up and brush their teeth," she recalled.

Being from the slums, for most of them, being around running water was a novelty. "We had many children who had only one parent. The child would be left at home alone while the surviving parent was working. These children were often the targets of sexual abuse and violence. There were also many children who had no parents at all but were sort of being cared for by some relative who could barely afford to feed his own child...