It’s tough to tell where three-year-old Zoya has had it worse. Back in her hometown in impoverished Uttar Pradesh, her parents could barely find enough work to feed their family of four every day. Here in a Mumbai slum as migrants for the last year, her father has found odd jobs as a daily-wage labourer, but they live in a hutment without access to public water, electricity or toilets.
To relieve herself every morning, little Zoya walks to the open creek that borders her slum community and shares the space with hundreds of other slum dwellers like her. In high tide, the creek is too dangerous for children, and in low tide, it is home to thousands of mosquitoes that breed disease and death.
It’s no surprise then that people in Zoya’s slum barely make it to 40 years of age, and nearly 50 percent of the children below 6 are malnourished.
Every month, Zoya’s father ekes together about Rs. 8000 (115USD), of which they must spend more than half just on buying clean drinking water from private sellers who hike rates at random. With what’s left, the family adjusts their food, shelter, clothing, health and hygiene.
In this situation of desperate poverty, education wasn’t even on the cards for Zoya. Her parents could barely afford to pay for her daily rickshaw ride to the nearest school!
So most days Zoya spent her time playing in the narrow gullies outside her slum community. When the monsoons beat down, she’d be stuck inside playing on the mud floor of her one-room house, dodging the rain that leaks in from their plastic-sheet roof above.
Zoya rarely dreamt of a world beyond the poverty she is surrounded by until June of last year, when your gifts enabled her to join our Beacon Learning Centre inside her slum community. Here she has become literate for the first time in her life.
Your gifts have provided her everything from uniforms to school bags, rainwear and stationary, and a daily nutritious meal every weekday. Zoya’s favourite memories in class are of the special times celebrating festivals, and playing sports.
322 children like Zoya are part of our learning centre in her slum community. For every single one of them, education, nutrition and healthcare were once luxuries that they could only wish for, but today, your gifts have made them a reality.
Thank you for reaching out to these children caught in generational poverty, and pulling them out into a life of empowerment, dignity and hope. You have changed the course of their lives forever.
