Hi my name is Gini Lyon,

I worked in London as a charity fundraiser for 5 years and have raised funds for many different charity, mostly overseas ones. Although my policy has always been that each charity is as deserving as the next, during this time I found myself becoming emotionally involved with overseas charity projects and their urgent need to raise funds for obvious reasons, i.e. addressing starvation and providing medication and clean drinking water.
In my mind these are our human rights and therefore this was where my charity work was taking me, right to the heart where attention was needed desperately and urgently.

In February 2006 I volunteered with Down2Earth and went to India to work with Aashray.
Aashray exists to provide shelter and support for run away children... more specifically children who have run away to live on the railway station and are consequently named "Railway Platform Children".

It makes me sad to the core when I think of those children who have had to make the final decision in their lives that it would be best to give up their family home to this extremely hard life. It is none too glamorous...they are open to all different types of corruption...slave labour, prostitution, and worst of all starvation which means that ultimately they are forced into begging to try and stay alive. Then of course there are diseases. It is extremely easy to pick up diseases whilst on the streets, and of course when a disease takes hold there is no Railway Platform Doctor to come along and diagnose and then offer medication.

There were around 15 older boys who had been given help in the form of counselling, food, shelter, and most importantly education so that they would be able to become independent further on down the line. Some of those boys had so much gratitude for the support that they had been given that they chose to come and work voluntarily for Aashray as Peer Educators to talk with the new younger boys who had been rescued from the railway life...finding out what had driven them to run away and giving them a friend to talk with… a friend who they could relate to.

There was also around 20 younger boys of all different ages who albeit were shy but were also very happy with their surroundings...when I went there I wore traditional Indian dress, and me being typically British and fair skinned this tickled the boys no end. I spoke with them all and asked them what they wanted to do when they were older and they all tried to hide behind each other, their big innocent brown eyes just staring at me and giggling at this strange white woman in a sari. But after a few minutes of gentle persuasion from the older boys finally they burst out with eagerness to tell me what they would all like to do when they were older, one wanted to be a policeman, another a lawyer, one a fireman, one a politician and unfortunately I cannot remember the rest. However it was clear after a while that maybe they all wanted to be famous cricket players! Well isn’t that every Indian boy’s dream.... they had been given a gift of balls and bats a few days before and after too long they seemed pretty involved in a serious game of cricket.

What Aashray is not is a project that can save all of India's homeless (although I’m sure they would if they could). What they are is a project that works in Hyderabad dealing with as many children as is financially possible at that time, offering counselling to those boys who need it and also giving them someone that they can trust. If those boys are able to go home then contact is made with the families via the local authorities and they are taken home. If however there is no home to go to or they cannot go back for some reason, then Aashray will take these boys in and change their entire outlook and future prospects. They will give them what every little boy needs… security and a functional life, which they would have little chance of were it not for the intervention of Aashray. If they cannot return home it is usually due to extremely difficult family situations i.e. the father may be an alcoholic that beats the mother and the child, or maybe he has been physically abusing the child. In any case it is a big decision for a child to flee the family home as they may be leaving their mother and siblings to face even harsher conditions than before, especially in the case of older boys who were responsible for making a financial contribution to their family. Although I did meet one boy who came to Hyderabad because he had dreams of becoming a Bollywood film star!

Aashray told me that they would like to help more and to be able to work with girls as well but at present they can only give shelter to boys as they are men, and there is a strong cultural policy in India that women work with the girls and men with the boys only. At the moment there are girls’ shelters that Aashray will refer the girls to.

I hope that I have given you food for thought and a good enough reason to give Down2Earth support.

Thanks

Gini Lyon