Education, food and healthcare for street children

Despite the many challenges faced by the homeless children as well as their distressed parents, on-going efforts by our friends’ Gadens Boerne (streetchildren) and their outreach workers, continue to provide relief and safe refuge for many of these children.

33 more homeless children on the streets of Kolkata have been helped to start coming to Sealdah Station school since our last report.

Amongst them is 12-year old Mahi whose parents have been forced to migrate from their village in rural Bihar, India to the harsh street-life of Kolkata in search for work.

Mahi, her 3 younger siblings and her parents soon found shelter in the Khaldar slum. Mahi used to attend a local school in her village, but like many girls of her age dropped out 2 years ago upon reaching puberty.

Upon arrival in Kolkata, her parents were even more fearful of Mahi’s welfare and as a result were insistent that Mahi stay at home and look after her 3 siblings and work at their makeshift home. Once the outreach workers had learnt about Mahi and her 3 siblings, they started speaking with her parents to explain to them that Mahi’s welfare and future development will be best served by attending school every day.

Mahi started attending in February 2024. Upon initial assessment, the teachers realised that Mahi demonstrated excellent learning abilities and quickly integrated Mahi into a class with children of similar educational needs.

Within a few weeks, Mahi has been able to quickly progress with learning Hindi, English and Math.

Despite her initial shyness and nervousness, Mahi has quickly adapted and demonstrated that she is a bright child. With the benefit of the care, schooling and careful nurturing that she and many other pubescent girls from similar backgrounds deserve and receive, she has quickly adopted to her new school, friends and teachers.

Mahi enjoys learning, as well as participating in cultural and recreational activities, demonstrating in particular how good a dancer she is. Together with some of her class-mates, Mahi has already progressed to become an integral member of the school dancing team who were recently invited to attend a dance event at the local University.

This is an another excellent example of how your continued support and the efforts of our friends, Gadens Boerne and their teachers, counsellors and outreach personnel is helping to transform the lives of these homeless children, especially vulnerable young girls such as Mahi.