While the lockdown has been lifted partially, jobs for many families have still not opened up, making daily survival a struggle. The toll it has taken on the lives of children is devastating, dependent on help from outside, dependent on help from YOU.
Our belief that every child should be protected, goes hand in hand with ensuring that no child goes hungry. Since the lockdown, we’ve reached food, groceries and basic essentials to 600+ children and 400+ adults, providing 3 meals per day and a total of 98335 meals (and counting). We need to continue in our efforts to reach the remotest communities and the most vulnerable children, to ensure their most basic right to food is met.
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Read Sonu’s story to know how we are helping children and their families in distress.
Lost and found at Delhi Railway Station
Sonu (name changed), a 12-year old boy was found roaming at Delhi Sarai Rohilla Railway Station on 12th of January 2020. Alone, he lost his way while trying to reach his grandmother’s place. The Railway Children team, plunged into action, tracked down his grandmother, and handed Sonu over.
During a counselling session with Sonu, the team unearthed Sonu’s difficult life story.
Sonu’s father had passed away a few years ago, changing his life dramatically. Unable to raise him as a single parent, his mother had handed him over to his paternal grandmother. She remarried, and started a new life, without him, in a distant village. The burden of a life without his parents was incomprehensible, but living with his loving grandmother made life easier.
Our team reconnects with Sonu & his grandmother
Sonu’s grandmother worked hard at a home in the neighbour as a domestic worker, to provide two meals to Sonu, each day. The lockdown meant she could not go to work, and she couldn’t bring food to the table. Without any savings, she was distraught at not being able to feed her grandson.
“I am getting old now, my daughter-in-law left the family after my son died, I thought that I would raise my grandson on my own, but this lockdown has destroyed all my hopes.. Whenever I see my grandson hungry, my heart starts aches,” Sonu’s grandmom says to the team member who called for a follow-up.
As our teams reached out to children who has been repatriated in the past, their reality came to light. Railway Children immediately linked the grandmother to the local grocery store and arranged for all their basic essentials to be taken care of.
“I had no idea that Railway Children India would come forward to help me when my loved ones left me in the face of this crisis. But somewhere I believed that God would find help for me. After the kind and humble gesture by your team, my faith in God is even stronger!” she says filled with emotion and with utmost gratitude.
