Our children’s toys:
Lego.
Dolls.
Soccer balls. Computer games.
Her children’s “toys”:
Headless and armless dolls.
Dirty syringes.
Broken glass bottles.
Diapers worn by someone their own age!
Our children’s daily life:
Sleep in comfie beds with clean sheets. Fresh food in abundance.
Opportunity for sports.
Her children’s daily life:
Sleep on mud floor or on the streets.
Food picked out from the garbage heap.
Work on the garbage heap as young as 3 years of age.
Our children’s opportunity for education:
Abundance of books.
Education mandatory by law.
Learning in a fully equipped school.
A computer for almost every child in the classroom. A gym with a full range of sports equipment.
Her children’s opportunity for education:
No enforced laws for mandatory school.
No enforced laws against child labour.
Children “learn” on the garbage heap what is “valuable.”
––Cardboard is worth more than poopy diapers.
––Plastic bottles are a prized find.
––Things labelled “Biochemical Waste Hazard” are to be avoided. ––Steam coming from the garbage heap is to be avoided: it is methane,
which is toxic and can be fatal.
––Watch for broken glass and used needles—there is no medical care. ––Infections don’t heal. Amputation is the “solution.”
“Our children” are yours and mine. “Her children” are Ragpickers.
They work on huge mountains of garbage. In Delhi alone, there are 85,000 ragpickers on the mountain of waste where 8,000 tons of garbage are dumped each day, by an endless convoy of trucks, whose drivers don’t watch if there is a child in the way.
They are the ragpicker children whose parents and caregivers, if they have any, are the “recyclers” of 80% of the garbage in India.
These children live on the garbage heap day after day, 10 hours and more each and every day.
22% of ragpickers are aged 0-10, 39% are aged 10-20, and 39% are over 20.
They live in a vicious cycle of poverty that is virtually impossible to break. Their parents live and die on the garbage heap. Tuberculosis and untreated infections are huge killers. Orphans are common.
Despair.
Desperate poverty. Hopelessness.
In the midst of this huge garbage heap, where does HOPE dwell for these children? You and I are these children’s HOPE.
You and I determine the future of twenty ragpicker children who have the opportunity to leave the garbage heap behind and attend Metropolitan Mission school and stay in the children’s home.
There is an overwhelming need to give these twenty children a life. To let them escape the vicious cycle of poverty that they are trapped in. You and I have the incredible opportunity to break the cycle—to give HOPE where now there is none.
It only costs $1/day/child to allow these children to attend MM school and for the first time in their lives have:
nutritious meals,
medical care
and
an education which will change their lives.
It only costs $1/day/child to bring HOPE into a life that is more than a garbage heap can offer.
Twenty ragpicker children.
Twenty lives that can be changed forever.
Twenty of us.
TWENTY MIRACLES WAITING TO HAPPEN