A new CI community center provides safety and sponsorship to children living in a notorious slum in India
By Damon Guinn
If you were to walk through the streets of the Bawana slum colony outside Delhi, India, you might mistake it for a refugee camp. More than 9,000 families are packed into five blocks of concrete and patchwork shacks, many of which have thatched roofs and mud floors. Their homes are so cramped, families fan out into the pockmarked brick streets to cook meals in clay hearths called chulhas. And because residents must pay to use congested community toilets, many opt to use the same open fields where they dump garbage.
There's no such thing as trash collection in the colony; garbage is left to pile up and clog the drains during monsoon season, creating cesspools that harbor parasites and disease. Water for cooking, cleaning and drinking, by contrast, is in short supply. It can only be accessed from a few contaminated public taps.
The safety of children in the Bawana slum colony outside Delhi, India, is threatened by crime and an abhorrent lack of sanitation, infrastructure and basic human services.
Residents of the slum have lived in a state of disarray ever since they were forcibly evicted from their homes in central Delhi in 2000 and relocated to Bawana to make room for urban development. The first families were given small plots of land as compensation, but they were instantly cut off from their only means of livelihood. As rickshaw drivers, food vendors and day laborers, most depended on Delhi's busy city streets to earn a living – streets that were now located over 20 miles from their new home.
Without access to decent jobs, schools, medical facilities and basic infrastructure, the colony devolved into a wasteland of crime and drugs. It had such a bad stigma, in fact, that its residents were automatically branded as thieves by outsiders. To add insult to injury, the slum is situated near a sprawling industrial park that has been praised as one of the best planned development projects in India. And, yet, none of those improvements have been extended to the colony.
A new community center will begin providing sponsorship services to the slum's children in January, thanks to donors like Bob and Rita Doshi and singer Debbie Gibson, who donated $50,000 in prize money she won while competing on The Celebrity Apprentice.
Residents didn't begin to see signs of progress until 2007, when Children International partnered with a local organization to open preschool centers in the community. Under the banner "Children International India Trust," boys and girls ages 3 to 7 were provided with basic education and nutritional assistance while their mothers received training on nutrition and hygiene.
Classes were held five days a week at four preschool centers in the colony, but more needed to be done. Too many children were working alongside their parents in factories or spending their days on the streets; too many youth were dropping out of school and turning to drugs and alcohol for escape.
When a safe and secure site was put up for sale near Bawana's public hospital, Children International seized the opportunity to open a new center and start offering full sponsorship benefits. The building could easily be expanded to accommodate a library, a medical clinic and pharmacy, a waiting room, staff offices and space for workshops and training. The only thing standing between the children of Bawana and the benefits they so desperately needed were a few finishing touches and the financial backing to complete construction.
India has a way of changing people, of opening one's eyes to the greater needs of humanity. That's what happened to Doug Tilden on his first trip to Kolkata in 1984.
The Bawana center's lead donor, Doug Tilden, developed a love for India's people while visiting with his sponsored child's family in West Bengal.
"I realized that I could no longer live my life the same as I had…" Doug shares. "It was monsoon season, with its flooding, and I got to see how miserable life was for much of the people. But what affected me the most were the children. I had never really seen the hollow look of hunger in children's faces before. I committed myself to make a difference to the best of my ability. I started with a single sponsorship through Children International."
Years later, after wrapping up a career in international shipping, Doug would meet Teresa Keller, and the two would travel the world with Teresa's kids and a family friend, carrying out community-development projects along the way. One stop introduced them to the Dalits, or "untouchables," a group of people in India born into a class the caste system has deemed impure. Moved to make a difference, the travelers helped build a new home and install water wells for the villagers, who welcomed them with open arms.
When Doug and Teresa got the chance to help another group of "outcasts," the people of Bawana, they dug even deeper and helped fund the colony's first CI community center. Once the center is inaugurated on December 21, the residents will have a new place to call home: the Tilden Keller Family Community Center.
One of the first rooms newly enrolled sponsored children will become acquainted with will be the medical clinic, which was made possible by sponsors Dan and Lisa Thomas. Lisa says her husband, an anesthesiologist, took on extra work for the sole purpose of raising money for a humanitarian project.
"As a physician, Dan recognizes the importance of early health interventions to prevent long-term learning disabilities and improve lifelong health," Lisa explains. "Healthy children build stronger lives, families and communities."
There was a second, more personal reason as well: both Dan and Lisa had siblings who died at a very young age despite the excellent care they received in U.S. hospitals. The couple couldn't imagine how agonizing it must be for children and families to cope with illness in an area with no pharmacies and just one public clinic that is only open half-days.
"We announced our donation of the clinic to our parents last Christmas morning, and our mothers were so happy to know that their own children who had passed on would be remembered in a faraway land, in a community center where other children were being helped to stay well," Lisa shares. "We hope our contribution will ease the suffering and improve the outlook for hundreds of children."
Once complete, CI's new community center will offer an open door to a better life in Bawana by providing reliable health care, material aid, and nutritional and educational support.
When parents in the colony were first told that CI was adding a community center to provide additional care for their children, one of the mothers blurted out with excitement, "So you mean there will be a dedicated doctor for our children?!" It was as if her prayers had suddenly been answered.
For the first time since their forced relocation, families in the Bawana colony will have a place to take refuge – a space built specifically for them. Beginning in January, 500 children will be enrolled and available for sponsorship, with another 500 added to the roster shortly thereafter. They'll have a safe place to play, to grow healthy and to study without feeling like outcasts.
You can be one of the first to sponsor a child in Bawana. Contact us at 1-800-888-3089 and add your name to the waiting list.
