Archive for November 24, 2008
Bob’s report: Visit to India
Mission awareness trip
Nov. 5-18, 2008
Society’s forgotten experience ‘beautiful transformation’
“They are the leftovers of society, but we are moving them to center stage. We want them to be fully human and fully alive.” —Suresh Singareddy, project coordinator, Hyderabad, India
An extra bonus on this trip is the chance to meet for the first time our new sponsored girl in the Hyderabad project. From an hour away in the countryside, 6-year-old Archana came on motorcycle with her mother and father.
Suresh told the sponsors: “The government calculates that we have approximately 55 million child laborers in India. Yet at CFCA we get to see the beautiful transformation in children and families.”
Early Christmas for former child laborers
During visits to subprojects, sponsors handed out Christmas presents for the families in attendance. Of special impact for the sponsors were the 100 or so sponsored girls living at the Divine Word Home. Just a short time ago, they were the throwaway children, the rag pickers in the garbage dumps of Hyderabad but now they attend a prestigious English medium school.
“We promise you that we will remember you,” Veronica told our group. “You always will be in our prayers, and we will make good use of this precious chance you are giving us so that we will be able to help others as you help us today.”
We attended the huge 2008 Annual Day Gathering on Nov. 9, with an estimated attendance of more than 7,000 mothers. I told the mothers they—and posthumously Father Francis Thumma, former project coordinator—are the recipients of the 2008 Pilgrimage of Faith Award from CFCA. (more…)
November 24, 2008 at 10:19 am Christian Foundation for Children and Aging (CFCA) Leave a comment
