Make a Difference

She is a 7 year old. She cannot go to school. She wakes up early morning at 5 A.M., helps her mother clean up the house. She then takes care of her 4 year old sister all morning, occasionally helping her dad while he cleans the cars and the motorbikes. She then watches from her window, as children of her age squeal and jump around in front of the school, and she watches them until the school bell rings and the gates are closed. She then takes her bath, gets ready, and helps her mom cook food at home, while her mom comes back, tired and exhausted from working all morning. She takes a nap in the afternoon, wakes up, sweeps her house, plays around with her sister, and goes back to the same window to watch the children walk back home, with their bags on. She watches them until the school gets deserted, and then accompanies her mother for her evening chores. She comes back, eats her dinner, watches some television, and goes back to sleep. She doesn?t know how to read and write, nor does she know how to write/spell her name.

All around the world, we know that there are millions of children out there, who do not get to experience the bliss of going to school, and the privilege of primary education. While every country boasts of policies that make free and compulsory education for every child as a mandate, at the grass root level, the implementation is just not happening. And it has made people who care stand up and take notice. We know that Non-Government organizations today, most of them at least, work on the aspect of making lives of such children, the underprivileged, an ounce better. Now that people, the younger generation in particular, are socially conscious, students and the young corporate world have made major contributions to such causes.

Volunteering for an organization, Aashayein Foundation, whose main aim is to achieve 100% literacy for the underprivileged child, and being closely associated and reading about organizations such as PankhudiM.A.D, Bhumi and , I acknowledge the fact that even a small contribution, monetary or time, does give a lot of satisfaction to one?s self-respect, and it gives you that perfect thought before you sleep, something which is rare to find these days.

The need of the hour, however, is to get things working at a bigger level, and take the initiative to transform the system around us such that politicos realize and act upon the need to eliminate social atrocities such as child labor and child abuse. The common man should realize the need to make a difference to the society, by contributing for making the lives of these future generation brighter, for only then would the world be a better place to live in, and childhood remain childhood.

Be the change you want to see !

PS : An article about a government school in Hyderabad, India, which is at the brink of being closed. Why ? Read on