Graduation
means separation for the children from people who may be the only
adults who have ever shown them unconditional love. And for the volunteers
it means saying good bye to children they have loved like their very
own. We do our best to make it a time of celebration and recognition
of accomplishment; but there are lots of forced smiles on both sides:
and many wet eyes. Note: We are working on getting
our own school license, which would open the door to our being able
to create Homework Clubs in the schools where our graduated children
attend - it would be open to our children and any others in the school
who wanted to attend. It would mean that our graduated children could
maintain contact with the love and support of our international volunteers,
who would run the clubs along with a volunteer teacher(s) from the
participating local school. |
closer
to the beginning of our relationship with them than the end, for our social
workers will continue to monitor and help each of our children all the way
through his or her educational career.
But December is coming - when all children who will enter school next year
must be registered - and we give ourselves quotas of how many children each
of our centres will find, persuade, prepare and register by the December
deadline. For this reason we graduated many of our children already in school,
to make way for the children we are beating the backstreets and hedgerows
to find. The reasons the children we are looking for are not in school are
three: extreme poverty, abusive parents or abandonment. |
To
fulfill our mission, of getting as many children as we can - who have
no chance at all of becoming educated if we don't get to them - into
school; we must constantly fight against the temptation of becoming
paternalistic: holding on to the lovable children we already have
rather than graduating them and bring in new children, who need the
same. Sometimes we lose volunteers over this, are often criticized.
But the number of extremely poor, abused, forgotten, undernourished
and uneducated little children is so staggering: we really must stick
to our plan. |