Hello Vision Rescue!
We recently had the privilege of going to India recently along with Adam Coleman, PGC’s Chairman. We have been supporting a local organisation in Mumbai called Vision Rescue for the last few years. They do phenomenal work in the slums of Mumbai with street kids, feeding thousands of children every week and also a have a big focus on getting them involved in education.
They have several large busses that they have converted to mobile schools that give the kids a basic entry level education, which is meant to be a taste of school aimed at inspiring them to join a local school in their area. They have also recently started some schools in the slums for kids who aren’t in any school program.Obviously it was a really impacting trip for me personally, on so many levels.
When you go to a place like Mumbai and see the extremes – between wealth and poverty – it can raise many questions. One thing is for sure, the issues in some of these communities are far more complex than simple cliches, or summing up the situation in a couple of sentences. To begin with there are many macro drivers for why these slums exist in the first place – one major one being urbanisation and people moving out of rural lifestyles into cities looking for work opportunities and a better life.
This is something that has happened across the majority of the world in the last 100 years, but more recently in India with a much larger population. There are many things happening in some of these communities that are heart breaking. It’s estimated that 300,000 children live on the streets in Mumbai without any parents or guardians – some have lost their parents, or have been neglected and there are many cases of children being sold, kidnapped or trafficked.
Many of the children that do live in the slums do not go to school.It’s easy to look at the surface and ask questions like “why doesn’t the government do something” or “why don’t people in India give money to help these people”. And I don’t want to focus on those sorts of questions, because they can be inaccurate or not understanding of the full picture. Rather I look at the work Vision Rescue is doing and it inspires me. They have focused on just doing what they can with what they have to break the cycle for some of these children.
Although the need in front of them is seemingly insurmountable, they have made a decision to help as many people as they can. And I can be sure, for the several thousand kids that live in the streets in Mumbai, their support makes a massive difference. Rather than saying “the need is too great and we can’t change things”, they have said “we can’t do everything but we must do something”.
One of their catch phrases is “we’re not taking the kids out of the slums, we’re taking the slum out of the kids.” It shows their focus is not just about addressing the need for food, nutrition and education, but giving the kids hope and opportunities for their future. We can get too focused on our own lives and our businesses that sometimes we lose sight of the bigger picture. These days many of us support many worthy causes.
If you want to know more about Vision Rescue we would be happy to have a chat about it or you can visit their website here: www.visionrescue.org.in– David Bagheri, CEO