Making a difference………
Imagine pulling out your child from school just because you are unable to find a job that pays enough to support your family.
Imagine your child not being able to attend school just because of health problems due to mal nutrition.
Imagine entire generations of your family being born into bonded labour, with no hope of breaking free.
Imagine a country. Call it India, if you will, where thousands of people die of entirely preventable causes.
Outrageous? Yet 10,000 children die every single day in India. More than in any natural catastrophes, famine or war. Half of India's children are deprived of their fundamental right to education every day. Two million Indian babies die each year before they celebrate their first birthday. Millions of India's children go to bed each night hungry, hopeless and angry. We as a nation, seem quite content to tolerate this violation, says CRY.
We are upto a certain extent responsible for this violation as we live in a society as a whole where we accept that all lives have equal values, but we fail to realize the same. We start our day with every luxury we can think of and sometimes even complain for not having something or the other that may or may not be important, but we never think that not every child is as fortunate as we are.
CAN WE MAKE a DIFFERENCE?
There are many NGOs like CRY, ROTARY INTERNATIONAL PRATHAM, SMILE, YUVA UNSTOPPABLE and so on working for universal education among underprivileged children, creating the process to embrace these children into mainstream in a sustained manner, facilitating them to emerge as productive assets, and set the foundation for nation building. The grim reality, however, is that despite all these many small and large efforts the outlook for most of India's underprivileged children will not change on a significant scale.
As a student I joined an NGO under TEACH INDIA a social initiative from the Times of India that brings together children in need of education and people who can contribute a little time towards teaching them. I share a very good time with children, which gives me a satisfaction and a feeling that we can certainly can make A difference!
What we need is that we start thinking of children, not as objects of sympathy, but as citizens with the same rights that we consider our due. We start to believe, really believe, that every child, regardless of birth and circumstances is truly equal. And realize that the policies and the everyday choices we make, must seek to address the root causes of children's problems not just their superficial manifestations.
Finally, we must all - as student, parents, teachers, investors, neighbors’, businesspersons, lawyers, consumers, activists, judges, administrators, journalists and politicians alike - overcome our apathy, cynicism and sheer inertia and reconfigure our priorities to put children first. We have to light a lamp through our life and broader our view to share few moments of our life with them with a purpose of making a difference.
“It is not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference.”
- Paul Bear Bryant
