Let me start by saying “All the power is within you, you can do anything & everything”. I think each one of you should believe that you have that power within you to do anything & we judge one life to understand that & find the purpose of our being on this earth.
Let me start by telling you a little story.
A girl named Dayana. She was 14 years of old visiting relative in a city. That city has very narrow lanes & the girl was returning from relative’s house. It was very dark & she heard a child crying. She went to find the source of that sound & found that a boy child was been beaten by his mother & crying very bitterly.
That boy kept saying that “I don’t want to go for work”.
Dayana’s father is a lawyer. She went home & asked her father, “Why do children have to work? Do we not have any laws in this country?”. Because she was also crying & her father was getting very irritated. Her father thinks that why this girl is crying?? She just visited a relative & he tried to explain to me something. That day Dayana understood one thing, laws & policies are just a piece of paper & only people bring change. That day she decided that she wants to be that group of people who bring change. Despite doubts raised by her family & friends, she chose to be a social worker.
Education is very important to prepare for anything. Social workers are social doctors. There is a problem in the society & they need to reach out to change it. So they have prepares themselves.
Social workers are working in a very different world, so that nobody has ever imagined.
Children in so many countries do lot of works. If travel in India by train. You will see children with barefoot, but smile on their face & twinkle in their eyes. Begging, scavenging , sweeping trains, working at the stalls. Children who were reselling distilled water bottles. Being abused, exploited into substance abuse. At the same time, some of them actually into crime which called as survival crimes. Some of them even part of bigger gangs. Children got arrested & they were being sent to the jail. The magistrate was willing to release them, but they had no place to go.
Social workers working for such children, who decided to do something for them.
They are visiting the whole country. They are visiting several railway stations. They are trying to make a child friendly country, which also make sure that there will not be any children working on the railway premises.
There are no local children in the railway stations. They are coming from other towns and villages. Children 80% of those are runaways.
There are two true stories.
One girl named Sonakshi & she always said “I born here & I will die here”. Let me tell you she actually died at that railway station. She fell off the teen shade & she died.
The other girl named Amala, she always refused to come near to the social workers. She refused to pick up a pencil, to write. Because she was convinced. One day she came to one of the social worker & said “our life will always be like this. Nothing is going to change”. She has no dream about her life. We should think that what we are doing to the society & we should decide there will not be any Sonakshi or Amala.
To make this a common vision. We can’t achieve it alone & we people make hope & give to the social workers that they are not working alone. We have to take people with us.
Please share your opinions about how to reduce child labour & how to protect them from abuse.
