In the Mysore district of southern India this safehouse is currently home to 50 children and 6 beautiful little babies. All are now cared for by our trained staff and receive medical care, counseling, nutritious food, education, clothing, school uniforms, vocational training and above all love and care.
Work has begun to build a dedicated babies’ home on the property which will allow us to care for 20 abandoned and rescued babies. There are also plans in the future to open a vocational training centre and establish a health clinic to provide healthcare for mothers and babies in this community.
There are scores of young boys and girls who make a living working the streets and railway stations in the Kanpur region in India. It is dangerous work as they face beatings, starvation and the risk of abduction from traffickers who wish to exploit them in factories, making plastics or weaving carpets, or in brothels.
FreeToBeKids started a new project in this region, working from a property in town, with 12 children who already fit into our rescue and sponsorship criteria. Recently, three acres of land has been purchased and sits waiting for a donor to start building the
FreeToBeKids Child Rescue & Development centre. This project is ready to go, with plans for more children at risk of exploitation to enter the program once the first building has been erected.
Vijayawada is a major centre for trafficking, as it is the railway connection point for all major cities in India, and in July 2009 we started a small project there. While we have a number of girls being cared for on a full time basis, this project is focusing more on breaking the cycle of poverty, so families are able to provide for their children and not be forced to sell them. We run a tuition centre, for children from poor families, where they receive additional tutoring after school and a healthy meal. This will help them to succeed at school, and then go on to university or to find a secure job. FreeToBeKids is also operating a tailoring centre, where single mothers are taught how to sew, and run a small business which will provide for them a sustainable income source.
Our newest project is located 40 minutes from the centre of Kolkata. The city’s population is over 14 million. It is a trafficking route from Bangladesh and Nepal for children being transported for work in brothels, factories or plantations. This is a place of extreme wealth and extreme poverty. You can walk the streets and see children begging and single mums sleeping on the embankments in the middle of the road with their babies at their feet.
Our new centre in Kolkata will be operational from January 2010 and will provide intensive case management for abused and exploited children as well as single mothers who have young children and no means of providing for their children. The centre will offer counseling, accommodation, vocational training for young ladies and school for children. Field worker Jeanette Thompson from our Australian team will be the operations manager.
In the Philippines FreeToBeKids partners with Shay Cullen from PREDA, where we are financially supporting a six-person child rescue team. The team focuses solely on brothel and jail rescue as the need for it is just so apparent. Often kids who are caught doing minor misdemeanours such as stealing, glue sniffing and fighting are jailed for lengthy periods in crowded cells without being charged.
Our team goes in, listens to their story and brings it before a magistrate and has them released to PREDA for training. They are also heavily involved in child protection and brothel rescue. Often the team is called and alerted to children who are being sold from brothels for sex, some children as young as four years of age. It is dangerous work and emotionally very draining to see the absolute worst crimes against children, but our rescue team is doing incredible work with kids in the Philippines.
