Their unskilled widowed mothers struggle to make ends meet. But their 200 children in slums in and around Chennai are able to dream of a better future - thanks to a global trust funding their studies.
The London-based Loomba Trust in collaboration with the local Shriram Social Welfare (SSW) Trust is helping the children to go to school by paying for their schooling and basic maintenance.
Saravanan, 13, studies in Class 7 at the Corporation Middle School in Kannadasanagar. His father, Gopalakrishnan, died years ago and his ailing mother Lakshmi earns about Rs.350 a month, working for an hour daily as a maid.
Lakshmi and her two sons live in a 10 ft by 10 ft room, cheek-by jowl with hundreds of other families like them in a resettlement colony -- an official euphemism for a slum -- called Rajarathinam Nagar, north of Chennai.
For women like Lakshmi, this little shelter and the provisions of the public distribution system make all the difference between living and dying.
To continue to send her younger son to school is a Herculean effort, but 'I want him to complete his studies', Lakshmi says.
Saravanan likes mathematics and wants to be a teacher. 'He is inspired by us and wants to study,' his 19-year-old-cousin Saraswathi, a student of engineering in a polytechnic, told IANS.
Saraswathi and her sister, a B.Sc. student, live in another one-room shanty next to Saravanan's and teach him when they have time. They have gone to college from the same environment and hope that the Loomba Trust scholarship will see Saravanan through high school.
Suresh, 14, is a Class 8 student of the MKB Nagar Government Higher Secondary School. He lives with his widowed mother and grandparents in an unpainted brick room. His father drank himself to death when he was just ten months old.
Now, his mother supports him and her parents with the Rs.800 she earns every month working as a maid. She would not have been able to educate Suresh without the help of the Loomba Trust.
In another Chennai slum, the divine smell of tomato rice wafts up from an open wood fire under a thatched roof where 16-year-old Deepa cooks a meal while her widowed mother is at work. She and her sister study and sleep on mats. The only adornment in their room is a television set on a tin trunk on top of which the girls keep their books and their cat finds a cushion. Except for some aluminium pots and pans, the family owns nothing. Yet this gutsy teenager, a beneficiary of the Loomba Trust scholarship, wants to be a lawyer.
This June, the Loomba Trust celebrated its 10th anniversary in New Delhi attended by 170 beneficiaries, including students and their widowed mothers, from all over India -- most stepping out of their hometowns for the first time in their lives.
The trust was set up in Britain in 1997 by Raj and Veena Loomba and has sister charities registered in India and the US. Cherie Blair, wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair, was its first president. The inspiration for the trust came from Raj's mother Shrimati Pushpa Wati Loomba, who became a widow at the age of 37 and went on to educate her seven children all by herself.
The trust works to educate the children of poor widows throughout India and is supporting 3,600 such beneficiaries across the country. After the December 2004 tsunami, the trust stepped forward to educate 500 children at Nagapattinam who lost their fathers in the tragedy and had committed Rs.80 million over a period of five years towards this end.
In 2004, the trust started The Loomba Trust Partnership Initiative to enable corporations and individuals to educate the children of poor widows in India through the charity.
The trust also marks the International Widows' Day each year June 23 to highlight the plight of widows and their children all over the world to promote effective action.
By Papri Sri Raman
Source: http://www.indiaenews.com/
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
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