kpong kids

Wanted to share with you an excerpt from John McCollum's blog. It very aptly describes the reality of orphaned children in India.

"Our driver dropped us off in front of a tiny storefront restaurant that I would have never picked out as a place to eat delicious and ostensibly safe food. We stooped through the low entry, squeezed around a rickety wooden table and ordered a thali – something like an Indian sampler plate – for each of us. The proprietress yelled something at a tiny girl who had been sitting at the other table in the restaurant folding napkins. The girl jumped up and began washing glasses which she then brought to our table. She was shy, but she smiled when I caught her eye. The lady yelled again, and the girl returned to her work at the table.

I asked Nandu to ask her age. She smiled shyly and shook her head. “She has no idea,” Nandu said. I asked her name. “No idea,” Nandu reported, “They call her small girl. She is a child laborer. Probably no parents.” I remember very little about the rest of the meal, and even today, Small Girl is in my thoughts day and night.

There are literally millions of children like Small Girl living and working in India today. In fact, some of the kids in our Kalimpong homes lived and worked in homes or restaurants, fields or factories before coming into our care. I don’t know if we can help this young girl, and I’m certain we will never even meet one tenth of one percent of the kids who would give everything for a loving home like the ones we’re creating in India, Cambodia and Thailand."