How you can help aimless children on streets

Health Watch, Normal
Source:

The National, Thursday July 26th, 2012

IT is always a challenge for us to have the determination and commitment to keep our child motivated to learn and do well.
The journey begins with you and our Lord.
Today we will focus on aimless children and how we can encourage our child’s motivation and what we, as parents, can do to make both our lives motivated.
Children are our treasure and a heavenly bliss in any family. Our love and care for them is important.
My thoughts go back to a verse from a popular book A Recapitulation of Baba’s Divine Teaching that had inspired me.
The book says “children are crops growing in the field to yield the harvest on which the nation has to sustain itself”.
Well readers, it is vital for us to take some time and think about the children who move around the streets in our society.
This was not the case some years ago. Christ (as in the Bible) was quoted saying that it is often “bliss in playing around the tender checks of children in whom there is no desires”.
This beautiful bundle of delight grows up as a charming child, full of promise and who can be groomed by gentle yet firm care with well directed love.
They will bloom into being a human being with the ability to understand, appreciate and practice the tough discipline founded with wisdom.
The child will develop the faculty to attain self knowledge and knowledge of the universe.
The earlier years of a child’s life are most crucial (between the ages of 5 and 7) so mothers and fathers must build good, strong and unshakeable foundation with uncompromising upbringing in our children.
This will optimise the foundation of a child’s character.
Today there is a concern about our aimless children, never seen in this context in the past in our society. It raises a question for us to rethink and direct our support towards our children who roam in our streets without attending regular school and/or have no or minimal acceptable parentage.
Street life is simply cruel and uncompromising. I believe that some reasons that happened are:
l  Not having proper loving homes, violence in the family, divorced parents, poverty, children may have had history of being abused;
l  To be trained by parents to beg or child induced to hard labour to earn money for the family and much more; and
l That these children work in dangerous environments such as car trafficking, servants, labourers, sex worker.
These children will easily be recruited to criminal gangs and may invariably be prosecuted and go to prison.
To be continued.
If you have any queries, write to:


Dr Uma Ambi, principal adviser
Mental Health Services
c/o Kundu 2-Beautiful Mind,
P O Box 8, Boroko, NCD