AGAPE left us agape

On a sunny afternoon that was June 25th, 2006 we paid a visit to AGAPE – a home for the children of God. The noun AGAPE means the love of God. So apt a name for the house of God, I must say.

AGAPE is run by a kind Pastor – it has two separate wings for both the sexes. The children of this house are those blessed by God, yet unlucky. Unlucky because they were orphans and left to the vagaries of the street; blessed because they had a kind soul in the like of the Pastor to take care of their housing and primary education. We visited the girls’ house on that fateful Sunday and found 16 odd sweet little brats. The oldest of the lot was about fifteen years of age and the youngest was around four. Each of the girls is put up in neighboring schools. After negotiating around a ferocious looking, yet (apparently) harmless dog, we entered the community room that doubled up as the TV room and the drawing room. The kids had just finished their afternoon siesta and were quite charged up. After the initial hiccups, the kids quite swarmed around us like a bee around its hive. Boy, were they glad to see us! We had a helluva time singing and frolicking around and before long came snack time. This was personally one of the most gratifying moments of the day as I was given the honor of leading the prayer before the snack. After more frolicking we got down to business and had a long discussion with the Pastor

We found that, increasingly the Pastor was finding it difficult to fund the higher education of his children. After some calculations, we found that it cost around INR 3000 for sponsoring a girls for her 10th standard education and about INR 2500 likewise for a boy. After taking down some more statistics like these, we were satisfied that AGAPE was indeed a first step for EDUCATE to take…a step that means a long stride in the lives of some of the children we hope to touch

Now came the final part of the day – the goodbyes. I was actually dreading that this would be the most difficult part…but, interestingly I found the kids somewhat indifferent of our leaving. It was then I realized the dearth of hope in the life of these kids. Each one of them – aspiring doctors and teachers – had experienced so much in life that the flame of hope was endangered to the point of darkness. Let us rekindle that flame – let us provide them with what is most important – HOPE; hope of a better future, hope of living their dreams…

Retrospectively - the thought that, I could easily have been that kid at AGAPE pushes me to redouble my commitment for the betterment of their future. As a final word, AGAPE indeed left us agape!

Whats behind The Idea?

The dictionary meaning of education is to ‘CREATE by TRAINING and TEACHING’. How about analyzing this before arguing the need for the creation of ‘yet another’ NGO for this purpose

The first part of the meaning lays its emphasis on CREATION – the conception of the idea of education inside a young mind is often an easy task, as this is often complimented by the inherent curiosity of the virgin mind. What is more difficult in this disjointed world is to ensure that this concept is extended to its execution stage in every young mind. All around us we see a lot of children who have been robbed off this wonderful opportunity. Here comes the first raison d’etre for the formation of ‘Educate-A-Child’. To start with, we strive to create this possibility in as many minds as possible. By creation, we mean the eradication of the possibility of an education being stymied for economic reasons. To this end, we have created a corpus aimed at supporting the education of children. This corpus is slated to grow through the contribution of each one of us…and distributed for children identified for such an aid. (If you want to contribute to this fund, please leave a message OR get in touch with sundar.karna@gmail.com)

The second part of education, lays its emphasis on TRAINING – once we create the possibility of a full-fledged education, we aim to organize and provide requisite trainings to these children. Be it be academic training or vocational training, our objective is to guide these inquisitive souls to the path that they dream to stride on

Last comes the most important part – TEACHING; I guess the only tense applicable for this verb is ‘present continuous’. We have all been gaining valuable information over the year…and have a storehouse of experience we can pass down to our younger generation. It goes without saying that, we have more to learn from these younger minds than they can ever hope to lean from us. I guess, the trick is – we would be taught to get in touch with the child within us and we help the children to handle the pangs of growth. We plan to begin a program of mentorship, where we identify mentors for each children for whom aid is provided and help him/her through his/her trials & tribulations.

This brings us to the question of why such an organization? If I were to answer this question honestly, I would say this organization is a manifestation of all the good within human nature. Humans are by nature quite collaborative animals. The only future that we look forward to is a future that is determined by the present-day children. By providing a fair chance for every child to live his dream, we ourselves are living a dream – a dream that tends to utopian limits

A seed is sown...

'Educate-A-Child' is a concept that stems from our belief that every child be given a fair chance for going through that wonderful process that enriches our life - Education. To this effect, our group has come together to do our bit towards creating that possibility in as many lives as we can...

To this effect, we have decided to contribute an amount not less than 1% of our salaries to a fund that will be channeled towards the education of a deserving candidate. Currently, we are taking those initial steps, tiny it may be, that will lead us towards the vision we are working towards - a vision that envisages a world where every child is armed with at least the primary level of education, enabling him to contribute to the society.

We have initiated the process of legalizing this NGO; what has also been done is the establishment of a process for the collection of funds and allocation of funds (I must admit that this process is a temporary fix until we have the NGO up and running legally).

For all those interested to hold hands with us in this journey, we urge you to get in touch with us through this blog. You can also direct your enquiries to sundar.karna@gmail.com – Shanmugam will be the first point of contact for all your enquiries and suggestions. With the belief that we can certainly make a difference, we take off on this journey…

“When asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated, Aristotle answered, "As much as the living are to the dead." - Diogenes Laertius (fl. 2nd century)”