SPRING IS HERE

It is here after a long and intense winter – with all the strength of rebirth, with brighter colors, like the colors that welcome the spring in India during the Holi festival.

Blue, red, yellow, green, purple… India joyfully celebrates the arrival of spring – its peoples and streets covered by water and dyes. Millions of Indians go out in the streets with water guns, buckets, and, above all, with powders dyed in all possible colors.


It is one of the most important festivities in the Indian calendar; it is lived with enthusiasm in all the cities of the country in the midst of a festive atmosphere that makes all differences in castes and religion vanish.

People wake up to the sound of drums that call to dance all who dare come out of their houses and participate in a fun war of colors.

It is the festival of fun, romance and fraternity – Holi celebrates the triumph of good over evil. With the appearance of the full moon in March, the ceremonies start on the day before Holi with a group prayer during which every family throws a stalk in the fire as an offering to the gods that protect the fields’ first fruits.

The eldest man in the family starts the celebration by throwing some colored water on his relatives, which makes the younger ones to follow suit – a ceremony that symbolizes the exchange of affection and blessings.

On Holi’s eve, on many streets, men dressed up as gods light big bonfires, and the neighbors come out to see the women sing and dance around the fire.

There is no doubt that spring is tantamount to life, play, coming together, rebirth, light and color. We find ourselves at the perfect moment to renew ourselves, and this is what Asha-Kiran does before new challenges that take shape in new Projects for children, and which we face with renewed energy, with vitality, with passion.


We will keep you up to date.

VULNERABLE CHILDREN

Street children are those who spend their lives on the streets, carrying out all their daily activities and earning a livelihood from working on the streets. Sometimes, family members arrive in the city together; others, children leave their families behind and try to start a new life by themselves; yet others, they have been abandoned or are orphans.

Having no access to personal hygiene, nutrition and health facilities, they are vulnerable to malnutrition, hunger and dreadful diseases that are aggravated by their precarious living circumstances.

Most of the children living on the streets are physically and emotionally worn down by the need to support themselves at such a young age. They lack a secure environment, a place they can call their own, where basic facilities are provided along with the presence of caring and protective adults, all of which would help children develop and gain the self-confidence to be a part of mainstream society as wholly integrated individuals.

Homeless street children share the common condition of being “out of place”, not only in street environments, but also in surroundings typically considered appropriate for children, such as home, school, and recreational settings. This “out-of-place” condition also tends to place these children outside the sphere of the rules and regulations set up by society to protect them.

Street children have, as compared with the rest of children, less chances than most other children of getting formal schooling, be it on account of their mobility, lack of birth certificates or of a permanent address, or lack of adults to enroll them in school.

Street-living children are exposed to certain health risks, as they have greater difficulty accessing health services than most poor urban children. It can be seen that street children have a higher risk of suffering malnutrition or psychological illnesses, chronic skin infections, sexually-transmitted diseases or AIDS, having accidents in the streets, enduring high levels of contamination, abusive sexual relationships and the risk of unwanted pregnancies.

A more global term which is becoming more common among organizations and entities, and which encompasses street children is ‘Vulnerable Children’. Without guidance and protection, these children run the risk of being victims of violence, exploitation, child trafficking, discrimination and other forms of abuse.

Following are some examples of vulnerable children:

- Street children.
- Children of construction workers who move from one construction site to another and build settlements at each new place.
- Children who work or beg in order to support themselves and their families.
- Children who are trafficked with and who sometimes remain in slavery or semi-slavery conditions.
- Children with serious or hereditary illnesses, or caused by their precarious living conditions.
- Children who are at odds with the law.

After all, streets are the main, almost the only, stage where children’s' social interactions take place, whether they are positive or negative. The fact that they live there does not mean that they are people without rights. In other words, we must understand and describe their issues from the children's viewpoint; from their own world vision, not just from ours.

This will be the best way for our description to coincide with the children's particular course of development, the specific cultural and social features of their lives and their personal background. In order to achieve this, we must listen to their voices – the voices of street children.

We will then be able to go from using an empty and anonymous term, to speaking about concrete facts concerning the people who, in spite being children, live on the streets. In this manner, we will also be able to understand the term 'street children' and the nature of its semantic field, varied and changeable in meaning, just like the children themselves.

WOMEN'S DAY. STREET GIRLS.

Within the group of vulnerable children that our Projects are destined to, we pay special attention to street girls, who, just as boys do, lack education and healthcare, and endure abject poverty, mistreatment and marginalization. Aside from all of this, they also endure discrimination for the fact of not having been born males, and their situation is markedly unfavorable.

In Indian society, where castes and dowries are so important, where the image and value of women is always subject to that of males, it is girls, and especially those lacking in means, who are the most vulnerable because they suffer the consequences of these beliefs from birth, and are subjected to begging, exploitation and the rest of problems associated with living and working in the streets.

The Indian government is beginning to become aware of the danger that the exceedingly vulnerable conditions of women in Indian society imply.