21st century India is a land of infinite layers. There are sprawling “mega cities”, where an ever-growing array of multinational companies, call centres, and high-technology firms rub shoulders with teeming slums that occupy every inch of urban wasteland. Meanwhile, traditional ways of life continue untouched in rural villages. There are temples, cinemas, politics, schools … and cricket. And everywhere the age-old struggle between poverty and potential rages on. New visitors find the sheer diversity “overwhelming”.
11 million slumdogs
India has another layer. One that the film Slumdog Millionaire highlighted – though for most real-life slumdogs there is no happy ending. India is home to the world’s largest population of street children. Conservative estimates put the figure at 11 million, but the number is likely to be far higher. Walk the crowded streets of Mumbai, Kolkata or Delhi, and you will meet them – begging, singing, performing for loose change; selling flowers, vegetables, fruit. They are rag-picking, working at tea stalls, playing porter at the railway stations, shining shoes. And they are always prey to exploitation, malnutrition, harassment, abuse.
400,000 children trafficked in one year
The circumstances that trap children in poverty and danger are as simple as accident of birth, caste, and location, and as complex as global capitalism and our insatiable appetite for cheap goods made from cheap labour. In India, as across South Asia, trafficking of children (and their parents) is a significant problem. According to UN sources, at least 400,000 children in India were victims of sex-trafficking in 2004 alone.
”Accidents of birth”
Two of the biggest challenges that India’s most vulnerable children face are determined at birth: caste, and being a girl. Those born in the slums live and die in the slums. Despite government efforts to introduce change, children of the “untouchables” (the Dalit caste) still have little access to education, healthcare, or opportunity.
And girls are particularly vulnerable. Last Easter, VIVA India (a children-at-risk agency, and one of our major partners in India) produced a report called “Abundant Life for the Girl Child”. In it they detail some of the discrimination that girls face: lack of access to health care, discrimination at home, low school enrolment, early marriage, trafficking, early working, and even female foeticide.
Names behind the numbers
VIVA can tell hundreds of stories like Ruthi’s*. Her parents died when she was just eight. Her aunt and uncle took her in, with the promise of sending her to school. But Ruthi was not sent to school; she was used as a domestic worker, and repeatedly raped by her uncle.
Or stories like Soni’s*. Soni is five years old. Her mother was trapped in prostitution. Soni’s grown up with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse all around her – a victim of severe neglect. Sadly her mother died. A local project working in the red light area has taken her into their care.
Pinky’s* story stands for the millions like her living on the streets. She moved with her parents to the city when she was a little girl, joining the growing group of street dwellers in India’s mega cities. They made themselves a home under a flyover and a “living” picking rags. When she was 15 she was married off to a man she didn’t know and became pregnant. Her baby boy died when he was just three months old; she was unable to feed him properly.
Unlocking children’s stories
Against this backdrop, what’s the vision for Pavement Project in India? India was one of the locations where Pavement Project was first tested ten years ago. Since then, workers have been trained mostly in and around Bangalore (a major city in the south). In such a challenging context, the programme has struggled to find a foothold for sustainable growth. In 2008, SGM Lifewords set about re-imagining how Pavement Project could make a difference in India. We began by meeting with some major children-at-risk agencies, among them VIVA India, World Vision India, and Oasis India. Together we explored how Pavement Project might enhance the work that these organisations are already doing with vulnerable children.
In Hyderabad (where the first new Pavement Project Worker Training was established in 2009) the local VIVA network (called Blossoms) works in some of the largest slums, running literacy and health projects; working with whole families. Likewise, World Vision’s field workers run community projects in slums, while Oasis provide community health workers, and run children’s clubs – supplemented by a team of counsellors who work one-to-one with (women and) children in particular need.
All these organisations highlighted how much traumatised children struggle to confide their stories. Unlocking what has happened to them is such an important step towards healing – and repeatedly the stories we hear from Pavement Project are about just that. Christina, an Indian worker who trained in Pavement Project’s Picture Me process in May last year, put it like this:
“I am really grateful to Jesus for making me a part of this project. The children I’ve counselled are children I see almost every day, and I’ve shared lots of light and happy moments with them. But when I worked through Picture Me with them, I saw a different side to their characters: stories which they’ve kept hidden up until now, things they have never let anyone else know … I thought I knew these children well, but I’m so grateful that Pavement Project has given me the tools to deepen my relationship with them and to relate God’s Word to each of them more effectively.”
Blossom and grow
The scale of the “problem” in India is enormous; and Pavement Project is very small in comparison. In 2009 we re-started work with just ten new workers; adding more with a second Training Workshop at the end of the year. The work we’ve done in putting the programme together with partner organisations means that these workers are well-supported in their projects, well-chosen for their ability to use Picture Me in their existing work; and the organisations they are a part of are beginning to dream about how tens and hundreds more of their workers can join Pavement Project from across different states and cities. Together we’re committed to making that dream a reality. That’s our vision for the next ten years!
Through Pavement Project, SGM Lifewords has always dreamed big dreams! Our prayer is to see Indian children’s lives touched and transformed, as they meet Jesus through the Bible stories Picture Me tells, and the workers who tell them.
Ten years ago, when the Pavement Project green bags were first created, each had a picture on the side – a small flower growing from between two paving stones. It symbolises the hope that children’s lives can blossom and flourish, even in hostile circumstances, as they experience God’s love for them. Think of that image when you pray for Pavement Project in India. This is our hope, however small we begin: that Pavement Project might leave a sea of flowers in its wake; blossoms that grow even in the dust and dirt of the slums, between the cracks, and under the flyovers.
*Names have been changed in line with SGM Lifewords‘ child protection policy.