The stitching and tailoring class at "Jan Shikshan Sansthan"

The gang with Jaspreet!!

Project Reach Out

while working with these children, i realized that the police as well as people in general eyed these boys with a lot of suspicion...they were blamed or picked up by the police for little or no reasons (most of the time they were booked under section 109 i.e. awaragardi - being on the roads without any reason). And the result is that even if these boys want to earn an honest living by polishing, they are not able to do so. I did talk to the police of sector 17 and the response in this regard was quite positive...their only demand was that these children should not disturb the people who come to shop in the plaza and they should stay away from the parking lot.

We also thought that it would be good if these people have some sort of an I-card that talks about these children and the effort that they are participating in. To that effect, we made the following I-card for the children/adults wherein we are requesting people to be considerate towards these guys -

I-card

Name: Anike
Father’s Name: Ramu
Address: Kumhar Colony, Sector 25, Chandigarh

Project Reachout is an endeavour to reach out to the children/adults on the street and to bring an inner change. The motive is to build a trusting relationship with these children and then provide guidance depending on their needs and circumstances.

Most of these children/adults live in the slums of sector 25, chandigarh and earn their living either by polishing shoes or by begging. Life on the street has hardened these boys and has made them quite different from what the *normal* society expects them to be…they are quick to start a fight or use abusive language or make up a story but deep down they are very simple, kind and even innocent.

As part of this effort, we are teaching them to read/write, we use the medium of games, painting, story-telling, meditation etc to bring out the innocence and love buried deep inside them and to improve their concentration. We are also encouraging the older boys to learn some vocation or to start some alternate work like selling corns, balloons, fruits or putting up a stall of tea etc. Some of the boys have already started going to learn stitching and tailoring in sector 37 (Jan Shikshan Sansthan).

This letter is written to request you to support these children/adults in whatever way you can - be polite to them and encourage them to work. I know sometimes these children can be very rude and rowdy but to bring a change in these children, we have to show them a more powerful way of communicating with love and we have to make the beginning.
Kindly co-operate and feel free to call me at 9872469046 for any questions or any complaints that you might have.

Thanks, Liza Tandon Chawla (9872469046 - gagchaw@yahoo.com)

acceptance is the key ...

Thanks for all the encouraging comments on this experiment (BTW, we have decided to call the experiment as Project Reach Out). Well, the corn-selling experiment was not quite successful (at least not the way we expected it to be...)...the boys were not able to sell roasted corn for more than a few days...there were varied reasons - the first and foremost was the lack of perseverance and hard work...and to top it all, the local police didn't support us...the image of these children was too strong for the police to believe that they genuinely wanted to sell corn and not ask for alms. So where ever they went in sector 17, the police chased them out (i also talked to the SHO of the area but he refused to support us and his reasons were simple - selling anything on the street is illegal). i suggested that the boys move their road side shop to a new sector but the gang was not ready for that and they gave it up too easily.

i won't call the corn-selling experiment a complete failure even though i was utterly disappointed in the beginning and felt that these people were good for nothing and there is nothing i can do to change their attitude. Like all experiments this one also revealed quite a few things to me - the most important thing was that i was trying to bring about a change in these people too soon...i wanted them to leave begging and instead of cribbing about their existing conditions, start thinking of alternatives. But what i didn’t understand was that the circumstances that they were brought up in taught them nothing else except to beg ...even if they polish shoes they generally ask the person to give more money than they deserve and people did give them and that is how they and their families sustained themselves...life on the street had really hardened them and nobody had ever talked to them about right or wrong, good or bad. ..they only learnt about survival and begging is what survived them and so that is what they did.

i understood that an inner change is a must for them to be able to adapt themselves to any kind of work and if anybody wants to start some work of their own then the initiative or the desire has to come from them. And i have to bring more acceptance for the way they are and that includes their laziness, their lack of initiatives, their unhygienic habits, lying etc and take each day as it comes. So now we meet everyday and study for an hour or so and then we do prayer and meditation for a few minutes followed by a circle of sharing where i talk to each person about something or the other and request the others to listen (this is mainly done to increase their attention span and also to teach them to listen to each other) and then we play games that help them concentrate or to listen or team work. The first week of meditation/prayer and circle of sharing was really tough....none of the children was ready to sit for so long or was ready to close their eyes...they kept laughing or throwing grass at each other or moved around the group that was sitting but Jaspreet (a very dedicated volunteer who recently joined our effort) and i didn't lose heart...the sign that we took as very positive was the fact that most of the children/adults did show up everyday and so we assumed that the prayer etc had touched a chord with them. But for the past few days, the prayer/meditation has been much better… (Some of the kids actually told me that they like this part of the day) and there is quite some change in their concentration levels.

i am not saying that everything is going perfect...infact, sometimes their rowdy behavior really disappoints but the only thing that i am sure is the fact they love to come to our little "pathshala" :-) And that is what matters…after all; i started this experiment without any agendas!

PS: the good news is that out of 15 boys who started to learn stitching and tailoring, 5 are regular and are doing pretty good...they are learning to stitch bags/purses and we are soon planning to stitch bags for selling.