October 2007 Archives
The idea behind this particular one of my Blogs came about whilst surfing on the internet. You all know the kind of thing: start with a particular site in mind, explore it for a while, then click on an interesting link, and then another, and then another. Before you know it, an hour has gone by, and you are ten generations of websites away from where you first started. Sometimes I can't even remember where I first started - why doesn't the History Bar have a time as well as a date for reference??
Anyway, back to the beginning. I was surfing away down a series of links connected to India, my favourite country, when all of a sudden I came across a link of great interest in the Indian branch of the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) website. This link was to the charity Railway Children, a UK-based charity who work with over 40 partner organisations and 117 projects worldwide across Africa, Asia, South America and Europe. Here's the big thing: they actually get things done! Last year they helped over 24,000 street children and for the first time ever spent over £1 million on street children projects.
As some of you know, I've spent a lot of time travelling around India, and as any visitor to India knows, you soon come across a lot of street children, especially around the larger railway stations. To some people these kids are just invisible, to others they are thieves and a nuisance, but to me they are just unlucky to have been dealt such a hand by life - any one of us could be in their shoes, but for the grace of God etc. Oh, and another thing: most of them don't even wear shoes!
There was a very interesting program on the BBC earlier in the year called Monsoon Railway - it focused on an area in the North East of India - Assam and Bengal - and followed three workers from July to September 2004 during the unforgiving rains of the summer monsoon. One of these workers talked about his connection with Future Hope, a charity based in Koltatta (as Calcutta is now called) that tries to look after some of the kids who live in, on, and under the railway stations in the West Bengal area. Railway Children does this too.
So, I wanted to share the Railway Children website with anyone I knew, just in case they would be interested as well. But where to post this link? It didn't quite fit on my Travel Blog, or any of the others. With the new Movable Type 4 software, its easy to have as many separate blogs as I like. Consequently my 'Thoughts & Serendipity' Blog was born.
Please visit here again. As the name suggests, I'll post thoughts I have or things I've come across that might interest others. If YOU have anything to share with me, let me know via a Comment on this page, or an email to my Contact Page. If you just want to say 'Hi', why not leave a message on my Guest Map?
