Edges Magazine Issue 24: Children With No Place To Go

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 24

January 2001

CHILDREN WITH
NO PLACE TO GO

My name is Xavier Devadas and I am the Director of Shelter Don Bosco in Bombay
.

The shelter is an open house for street-children. Its sole aim is to work with children who have no one, who are totally and completely isolated in society. We call them ruthless and rootless. How does a child end up on the street with no one? There are a variety of reasons. The basic reason is that societies basic social programme has failed such children.

We must not forget that India is a large country and more than 70% of the people live in the villages, and are totally dependent on the rain for their survival. When the rain fails there are no crops and therefore no work. Where there is no work there is no money and with no money families who are already poor borrow. When they cannot pay back there is a huge family crisis and the family unit breaks down.

Family-centred crisis is one of the main reasons why a child ends up on the streets. They become separated from their family unit. Other reasons for this are alcoholism, child labour, the death of parents, parents in crime, parents who are mentally and physically handicapped or who are terminally ill. Children tend to escape from this and go in search of something else. Also the natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and famine can be important factors as to why a child ends up on the street.

Such children move away from the villages to the big city of Bombay, which is a magnet to children. They move from village to village until they find a bigger town and then they take a train to Bombay. If they are caught they will be thrown off but they keep trying. They will get on a train until they arrive in this city. They are attracted to this city because of the media, the lust of the city and the massiveness of it.

When a child arrives they are all by themselves, there is no adult supervision and this automatically forces them to be an adult the minute they come onto the street. Children as young as 8 or 9 have to fend for themselves, protect themselves and earn there own livelihood, choose their friends and take on adult roles, yet they are still children.

These children who are begging, rag-picking and trying to earn a living whatever way they can -cleaning shoes, car windows, are looked upon as outcasts lacking the needs of basic shelter and clothing. They are also exploited by older boys, lenders and employers.

Again, society looks upon these children as useless, dirty, anti-social, lazy, dangerous and unproductive. They are seen as the seed of the problem and not the victims of a social problem. Such children look at society with suspicion, fear and hate. They think society is a heartless monster with a mass of exploiters who are indifferent, selfish and money-centred people. These children try to find love and acceptance, to gain support, not pity, to be recognised with respect and treated as children.

Shelter Don Bosco is part of the Don Bosco group of institutions. Our inspiration springs from that great lover and friend of youth - Don Bosco. He lived in the 19th Century and he had a vision to reach out to the unreached young people on the streets, to empower them with functional education and to integrate them into the larger society. Walking in his footsteps, Shelter Don Bosco was born to answer that call in 1987. Our aims and objectives remain similar to Don Bosco’s.

Looking back to the past our shelter has really grown in a big way. The shelter’s aim is to develop the child in a holistic manner - physically, emotionally and psychologically and financially. We try to enable them to settle within the society in which they live.

The children we work with mainly live on the streets, on railway platforms, under bridges and anywhere where they can lay their head. We begin our work with these children on the streets. We go out into the areas where these children are living - on railway platforms, in market places, on the roads, wherever we can find them. We make contact with them each day. Some of the older boys in our project also work with us. They tell the children about the work we can do and the ways in which we can help them.

We work all through the day and go to different parts of Bombay, but when we are not out on the streets we have a drop-in centre that opens from early morning until the evening where children can go for a rest, a wash, some food, seek advice and counselling. If a child needs assistance during the night we have a 24-hour door open to them. This means that street-children can come through our door at any time of day or night and there will be someone there to help them. We have 140 children living in the shelter but that does not mean to say that we will turn anybody away who comes to us for help.

We provide a programme of prevention of child labour and begging, using education as a means to teach children about the problems associated with this type of living. If children stay with us they have to comply with the following: they must be vulnerable, young, sick, or new to the city. These are the children we feel are the most vulnerable and need our help the most. There are thousands on the street and we cannot accommodate everyone. Those who have a dream and motivation would be the second type of child we would like to help. Those children who want to study, to save money and have a home. Our project provides them with an opportunity to be liberated from the situation they are in.

When they have gone through our programme we rent some accommodation - a hut in a slum area, where four or five boys can live together and make a family. This helps them to live independently and to feel a sense of belonging.

Eight out of ten boys are addicted to something or other whether it be drink, heroin or whatever type of drugs. If they come into our project we put them into a rehabilitation programme. This takes place over 5 stages. Firstly, there is street preparation - identification of children in our street contact groups. We will have several meetings with them while they are on the streets and we assess their motivation. Through this assessment we decide if they have the commitment to join our project. They are then sent to a detoxification unit within the hospital which we fund ourselves. Depending on the individual this can be for ten to fifteen days.

After they have gone through their detoxification they can then join our rehabilitation programme. We take them out of Bombay and they go to a special home where we can accommodate 15 people at a time. They stay there for about 3 months. Here they go through a period of rescheduling their lives with counselling, group therapy, meditation and spirituality.