“I want to be a Chartered Accountant when I grow up”
This may seem like a fairly regular aspiration, but I heard this from a 10 year old orphan. As I met 60 of them yesterday, I was moved. Laughter, joy, energy, when they have lost everything they had as kids.
The emotions I felt were overwhelming
As I served dinner to them, I could feel a sense of deep community in those kids. Extremely disciplined, polite, and sharing, one couldn’t feel anything was amiss. Except when you would ask them their names, no one had a surname.
It is an out of body experience where you question all your own trivial problems
The kids were orphaned because their parents were exceptionally poor. Their parents were labourers, rock smashers, miners, and died. If it wasn’t for the residential school, they would be nameless, faceless, thrown into the world to fend for themselves. A life lost. A story unwritten.
“I wanted to keep them alive and see dreams” said the founder of the school
Spending time in a world which I barely understood, she and her husband went to mines. They would see absolute tragedy daily. Using their own meagre salaries, they took into their wings the kids who lost their families. The two started a small school. From 10 kids 15 years ago, they grew to 50, 100, 350 and now a 1000.
But the transformation didn’t end there
All of her students can barely speak coherently, let alone communicate in English. From there on, there are some incredible stories. One is an Advocate in Pune. One has joined the Army. One has become an Engineer. One has become a Chartered Accountant, who recently visited the school to give a huge thanks for the transformation
No wonder the kid I spoke to wanted to be one
There are stories of real entrepreneurship that surrounds us, but never sees any coverage. Real transformation, real upliftment, the progress in the shadows that keeps us going. The journeys are incredible.
I ended up committing to sponsor the education of the CA aspiring kid
Sponsoring was the least I could do. He may not have a surname, but I hope to see him put a prefix to his name one day