Day 8

My group was on education today. Usually we tutor during school hours but today was a holiday so there was no school. The kids were just pulled from their hostels throughout the day instead. Getting the kids to tutoring on time was a little crazy. Someone also decided to pull apart and deep clean the computer lab which put math tutoring 2 hours behind. But everything worked out in the end.

This is the back of the school

Today I was thinking of how incredible the school at RSO is. It's basically a boarding school. Most of the kids live here but they are not orphans. 80% of the children come from leprosy colonies and 20% come from the surrounding village. Leprosy affects the whole family. Not only is the individual with leprosy outcast from society, but the family is too. They are forced to move to colonies and they become untouchables. Doctors won't treat them and others won't employ them. People with leprosy basically end up alone and begging on the streets. Even if a child is free of leprosy they live with the same stigma. Their parents use them to beg on the streets in efforts to earn more money, and they are unable to go to school and gain an education.

RSO outreach has litterally turned lives around for 200+ children. I was looking at the children today and thinking of how beautiful they are.  And then I pictured each of them on the streets begging, and living in the small huts that I've seen in the colonies.

RSO has opened opportunities for these kids that most children in India never have. They are attending a good school and being taught by americans, learning english, having 3 meals a day, clean water, and hundreds of volunteers to love them. They've even had dancers from broadway come to teach their dance classes. These kids will have the skills neccessary to become successful memebers of society if they choose to use them. They will have opportunities that they never would have had withtout RSO.