Indian Families and Students Although India is gradually becoming one of Asia’s great economic powers, it still is reputed to contain the largest number of the world’s poor, according to some demographers. Considering the size of its population — over 1.2 billion people — the country has hundreds of millions of people who live in abject poverty.
The Cities
Many of these have been attracted to the cities — Bombay and Delhi are the two largest where the jobs and money are, while even more remain in the countryside trying to eke out a living from the land.
Education Although the state provides some help toward education, there is still some cost that must be paid by the parents. Unfortunately many families cannot meet these costs due to the poverty and others are not willing to educate their children as they prefer that the children help to work the land as unpaid labour. Yet if the younger generation is not educated, India will never be able to break the cycle of dependence on manual labour, a virtual servitude to obsolete and inadequate agricultural practices.
Volunteers Volunteers, Bryan and Rosi Levman, travelled to India last spring and visited all 18 scholarship students in the Ladakh and Delhi areas. They met with our agents and visited each village where our students live and attend school. They visited all the schools and distributed computers where needed. They were happy to discover that in all these families, no matter how poor, it was evident that the parents are committed and supportive of their children's education.
Give Kids a Chance Give Kids a Chance has opened branches in two of the poorer parts of India. Leh in Ladakh (western Tibet) and Patay Bhoor in upper Pradesh, not far from New Delhi. Altogether eighteen children are being supported through school. Successful graduates will then have an opportunity to move on to university. Each student will continue to be supported until graduation, provided their marks indicate a satisfactory level of commitment to self-betterment through education.
