what next?

what next??

there is a group of children and adults that i have been working with from the past 3 months...this group earn their living either by begging or by polishing shoes...i mainly started working with the children but slowly their elders joined the group...we would get together and learn to read/write, tell stories, play games or paint. the objective was to give them love and acceptance and get to know them and then bring about a need based change if required...the result was that in a short period of time, we all got to know each other well...i gave them my cell phone number and started getting 4-5 calls everyday...the calls were either just to say "hello" or seeking advise or seeking help if caught by the police (very common problem).

some of the elders have taken up to learn stitching and tailoring...there are a total of 12 enrolled out of which 8 show up regularly....rest of the crowd continues to come to the rose garden...i have also found a very dedicated volunteer - Jaspreet. Jaspreet comes everyday to teach the children and gets along well with everybody...i am also planning to start teaching theatre to the children... we are planning to do a street theatre on the song - 'Nanhe munhe Bache teree muthee mein kya hain".

Now the challenge that i am facing is that if i want the elders to stop asking their younger siblings or their children to beg, i have to give them an alternative...i tried the bhutta experiment (mentioned below) but it didn't work. Since then one of the boys has been asking for my help to open a small roadside shop to sell tea and bread (very common in India)...and another one has been requesting my help to buy a rickshaw. So i am thinking why not start something like the grameen bank for them. The idea is to collect a small pool of money (say Rs 10,000 ($225) or more) and provide loan to these boys to start their own work...these loans are going to be interest free and they can payback in weekly or monthly installments...and the money returned can be added to the pool again and can be loaned again. We will define some rules of giving out loans depending on the need of the community that i am working with.

I have talked briefly to some of the men i am working with and they have liked the idea though they are still trying to understand the concept...we still have to sit and discuss the rules that they would like to follow. Our first two case studies would be Jatan, who wants to start a road side shop to sell tea and bread and Kishan who wants to buy a rickshaw.

please let me know if you would like to participate in this experiment...i am not sure if it is going to work...if they will be able to return back the money or pay the installments but i am quite certain that if they take the loan, they would try their best.