Caroline with Deepak, March 2009

The Miracle Foundation secured the place on Global Giving for two years, by raising $4,000 from 50 unique donors, in 30 days. Now, the foundation has a chance to win from $3,000 to $6,000 in grant money from Global Giving – and you can help make that happen!

As part of their Global Open Challenge 2009, Global Giving is awarding bonus grants of up to $3,000 for the nonprofit organizations that raise the most money during the Challenge – and an additional $3,000 will be awarded to the organization that has the most unique donors.

Please click here to go to The Miracle Foundation’s page on Global Giving and make your donation to help get us there – the foundation is currently in 3rd place out of 121 organizations! No donation is too small - even $10 will help a lot! Online donations will be accepted through September 18th, 2009.

Miracle Foundation’s project will save the lives of single mothers and their babies, by providing a home, nutrition, healthcare and love to these marginalized members of India’s untouchable caste. Caroline Boudreaux, founder of The Miracle Foundation, says, “By offering a safe environment to these abandoned and destitute mothers, we improve the maternal and infant mortality rate and care for those who are not cared for by others. It is a powerful way to make a significant difference.”

Providing pre-natal care, hospital births, formula, and immunizations ensures healthy mothers and children. Hear the impact that The Miracle Foundation is having direct from a mother herself. Sangeeta, a woman who gave birth at the home in Simdega, said, “I now have hope for both my own and my child’s future.”

Global Giving is an online marketplace that connects you to the causes and countries you care about. You select the projects you want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution, and get regular progress updates – so you can see your impact. Their mission is to build an efficient, open, thriving marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them.

Dog’s Eye View Media proudly presents a true-life story straight from today’s headlines.  Shelley Seale’s narrative non-fiction book follows the lives of just such children as those brought to life in the movie Slumdog Millionaire. The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India depicts Shelley’s journey into orphanages and through the streets and slums of India where millions of innocent children live without families.

Slumdog Millionaire is a fictional movie ending with a bizarre twist of fate. However, the reality of the story is that for millions of children in India, the life portrayed in the movie continues beyond the rags-to-riches ending of the film. Today there are 25 million Indian children living without parents, on the streets or in orphanages or other institutional homes – some good, and some bad or corrupt like that portrayed in the movie. Many of these children become victims of trafficking, prostitution and child labor. Slumdog Millionaire shows us a side of India, and a way of life, that hundreds of thousands of children in Mumbai alone struggle to survive every day.

During her three years of writing The Weight of Silence, Shelley has befriended and told the stories of many such children – and has born witness to their struggles first hand. Little did she know how much they would change her life. Their hope and resilience amazed Shelley time and time again; the ability of their spirits to overcome crippling challenges inspired her. Even in the most deprived circumstances they are still kids – they laugh and play, perhaps far less frequently than others; they develop strong bonds and relationships to create family where none exists; and most of all they have an enormous amount of love to give. Foreword by Joan Collins, with endorsements by Geralyn Dreyfous (Executive Producer of Born Into Brothels), Dominique Lapierre (Author of City of Joy), Save The Children, Human Rights Watch and more. Order the book from weightofsilence.wordpress.com and receive an autographed copy and bookmark!

“Amidst the growing prosperity of India, there is an entire generation of parentless children growing up. They are everywhere. They fill the streets, the railway stations, the shanty villages. Some scrounge through trash for newspapers, rags or anything they can sell at traffic intersections. Others, often as young as two or three years old, beg. Many are homeless, overflowing orphanages and other institutional homes to live on the streets where they are extremely vulnerable to being trafficked into child labor if they’re lucky, brothels if they’re not. They are invisible children; their plight goes virtually unnoticed, their voices silenced. The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India is a non-fiction narrative that gives a strong and hopeful voice to its most vulnerable citizens. The stories told in this book do not belong to me. They were given to me as a gift, often because I was the only person who had ever asked.”

I don’t usually go to the movies. It’s just too darn expensive. But I am going tomorrow. I know this will be worth every penny. You see, tomorrow is International Women’s Day, and I am celebrating by going to see this movie. I watched the preview and I felt inspired. I hope you do too.

Here is some information from the site:

“In honor of International Women’s Day on Thursday, March 5th, Fathom Events presents the acclaimed documentary, A Powerful Noise. This exclusive event will be followed by a live panel discussion with top experts and celebrity activists. You can be a part of the discussion by submitting your questions. Let your voice be heard.”

You can also use the power of Twitter

“You can help fight global poverty on Twitter! Just tweet “#apowerfulnoise” anytime from March 2nd to March 5th, and NCM Fathom will donate $.50 for up to 10,000 Tweets to CARE, an organization working to end global poverty, in honor of the upcoming one-night event featuring the acclaimed documentary A Powerful Noise.”

Check your local listings to see where A Powerful Noise is playing.

Please take a moment and watch the preview. I hope to hear about your own night at the movies.

This tale of life and love in the slums of Mumbai alternates between heartbreak and triumph. The story follows two brothers who live in abject poverty, whose lives are made even more difficult after they are orphaned. Following them throughout their childhood and into early adulthood – along with their friend Latika – we see them fight against exploiters, brothel owners, child abusers, and even each other, in their struggle to survive.

I spent a day as an “Un-Tourist” in these very slums of Mumbai – a place called Dharavi. I went with Deepa Krishnan, owner of tour operator Mumbai Magic. Immersing yourself in the real lives of ordinary people in a place traveled to is a unique experience, and one that can truly bring the spirit and culture of a place alive to the traveler.

Slumdog Millionaire captures this brilliantly and is a fantastic movie, that caused me at times to want to applaud and at times to cringe and shut my eyes. Despite its upbeat ending and “rags to riches” Hollywood/Bollywood mechanism, Slumdog Millionaire shows us a side of India, and a way of life, that millions of children struggle to survive every day. Orphaning, abandonment, homelessness, begging, working, being exploited and abused…this is real, daily life for hundreds of thousands of children in Mumbai alone.

The actors who play the characters at their youngest ages are themselves Hindi-speaking street kids, discovered by casting director Loveleen Tandan. This fact reminded me of the 1988 movie Salaam Bombay, a movie by Mira Nair that was also about street kids in Mumbai, and which featured a cast of actual street children. Nair went on to start a foundation, the Salaam Baalak Trust, with proceeds from the film, and today SBT assists thousands of street children in Mumbai and Delhi. I interviewed Nair’s mother, Praveen, in my book The Weight of Silence; Praveen started SBT with her daughter Mira.

Salaam Bombay has a grittier, more realistic feel without the rags-to-riches ending. While I love the Slumdog Millionaire movie, while watching it there did resonate in me a sense of reinforcement of just such fantasies that lead kids into street life in Mumbai all the time. While traveling India and researching for my book, I interviewed many social workers and child advocates who told me that thousands of children run away from home and catch a train to “Bombay” with fantasies of the movies or making it big in the glamorous city filling their head. Sadly, most of them fall prey to just such exploiters as those found in both these movies: traffickers, begging rings, brothel owners or factory recruiters. Many of them remain living in the railway stations in which they arrive, begging or scratching out a living by sorting through trash for recycling or other dangerous endeavors. You can read my story here about my day spent with just such railway boys in Mumbai.

The lesson I would like to leave about this movie is: please see it. Enjoy it. Revel with these kids when luck comes there way. But please, please – don’t forget the millions of others whose lives continue in poverty, abuse and despair.

What Can You Do?

• Go to the “How Can You Help” section of Salaam Baalak Trust
• Read about child trafficking and what you can do at Oasis India’s website
• Donate to Childline India, the hotline for homeless children or those in trouble
  

Hundreds of millions are shut off from the boom, living completely outside the affluence it brings.

Eighty percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day and only 33% have access to sanitation. Some are merely left out of this shimmering new India while others are actively dislodged by it.

Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata are all home to massive, sprawling slums in which a large portion of its citizens live. These slums are severely lacking in essential services such as decent housing, sanitation and access to clean, safe water. Their citizens are pushed to the very margins of society, existing in the smallest sliver of space possible. Living on the periphery, they are often a source of embarrassment to those who wish to present only the glowing face of Indian success.

In the middle of Mumbai sits a place called Dharavi, widely known as the largest slum in Asia. The land on which Dharavi sits was once swamp, later filled in to become a sort of human dumping ground for the poor of nearby Mumbai. As the city sprawled outward, however, in its inexorable and immense growth it grew to encompass Dharavi. Surrounding luxury high-rise buildings look down over its teeming 550 acres. Although exact population figures are difficult to ascertain it is estimated that close to a million people live in Dharavi.

One of the official indicators of a slum, along with lack of water and sanitation, overcrowding and non-durable housing structures, is the percentage of residents living in illegal housing. Children living in such poor conditions are more likely to die from pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles or HIV/AIDS than those living in a non-slum area, and are more vulnerable to respiratory illnesses and other infectious diseases. The illegal status often deprives residents of public services; in Dharavi, for example, there is only one toilet for every 1,500 residents. Not only is most of the housing here illegal but so is 90% of the commercial activity. Half of Mumbai’s sixteen million citizens live in such an urban slum.

To me, this place dispels the myth that poverty is due to laziness, that the poor somehow deserve their lot in life because they are lazy or stupid or otherwise lacking in some important character trait that the successful possess.

Dharavi is a resounding rebuttal to that belief. Industry and entrepreneurship abound. Very few people are idle. Entire cottage industries thrive here: weaving, food, clothing manufacturing, pottery. Small business owners work hard at production, and all around me is the buzz of things happening. Born into the right mix of circumstances – as the vast majority of “self-made” successes are – the industry-makers here would no doubt be thriving business people with comfortable bank accounts. Instead by pure chance they were born into a world with far less access to education and far fewer opportunities to climb onto the next rung of economic prosperity, no matter how smart or hard-working they are.

Due to its location on one of Mumbai’s most prime pieces of real estate, Dharavi itself is in danger. The city has unveiled “Vision Mumbai,” their plan to create a world-class city by 2013. This plan calls for eyesores full of citizens who don’t pay taxes, such as Dharavi, to be eliminated and new, expensive condominiums erected in their places. Residents will be forcibly evicted into government-built housing nearby. Perhaps then, living in massive gray concrete bunkers and dependent on the government in a way they aren’t now, the residents will be living in a true slum.

Wow, times have sure changed. Thankfully so has our understanding of this incurable disease.

For the most part, in America, we know what causes is it and how to prevent it, but there are still places in the world that do not have access to the education and resources needed to help prevent the spread of this deadly disease.

AVERT is an international HIV and AIDS charity based in the UK, with the aim of AVERTing HIV and AIDS worldwide.

AVERT has a number of overseas projects, helping with the problem of HIV/AIDS in countries where there is a particularly high rate of infection, such as South Africa, or where there is a rapidly increasing rate of infection such as in India.

When a country or village suffers from an outbreak of HIV and AIDS there is a ripple effect within the community. Sick parents are unable to work or care for their sick and ill children. The result of such conditions is extreme poverty and starvation in many areas. Many children are orphaned because of the death of one or both of their parents. The cycle is perpetual… and heart-breaking.

By donating to AVERT, you can help change the future of someone with HIV or AIDS. You can also donate by helping with their fund raising efforts.

Help bring an end to the cycle of poverty and death attributed to the HIV and AIDS epidemic.

Mothers Fighting for Others