“Sometimes People just need a Hand to hold and a Heart to Understand.”

We are often so content and engrossed in our own lives that we fail to notice the cruel reality of life! Have you ever thought of stepping outside your comfort zone and see things that otherwise go unnoticed? You and I have all the luxuries we need, but what about the children who do not even have the basic necessities to live a normal life? Do they not have the right to have a happy childhood? Or is their life any less valuable than ours? Does any one of us have to right to take away their innocence? All these thoughts had been haunting me from quite some time and that’s when I decided to work with an NGO that supports and protects children from being exploited; and what could be better than CRY for this cause.

I started my journey with CRY on 1^st June 2011. I was all set to work for this cause, but I was absolutely clueless about how things will go. I believe that every human is valuable, and doesn’t deserve to be mistreated, be it a child yet to be born! CRY is an organization that works towards smallest of things, things we tend to ignore most of the times, and when I was made familiar with the way CRY works on the smallest of issues and brings about such major changes, I was taken aback.

When you work for such organizations, it’s very important to feel for the cause and also be sensitive towards the society at large. First day of my internship started with a field work for CRY’s first anti child labor campaign that was to take place on 12^th June 2011 at Dilli Haat, and I was more than happy to be a part of it.

I visited various villages and construction sites within Gurgaon and interacted with various children. 9 out of 10 children were not attending school because their parents wanted them to take care of the house or their young siblings or got them involved in other services like rickshaw pulling, domestic help, working at tea stalls etc. all these children were between the age group of 4- 13 yrs. They work bare feet, and most them are suffering from diseases that they are not even aware of. I was stunned to see that they were still content in what they have.

A few days later I went for another field trip to Ghazipur and I saw things I had never seen before. It was shocking to see children sleeping, eating, and living in garbage. I saw a huge dump yard and when I entered I saw 100’s of families living within that dump yard. None of these families are interested in sending their children to school; rather, they choose to make them work. It is shocking to see that the parents don’t want their children to have a better life ahead. But if you come to think of it, it is not entirely their fault because they themselves are not educated to be able to understand the importance of knowledge or any kind of awareness. And as a consequence, their next generation goes on to suffer.

Going to places I had never seen or even heard of before, interacting with people, understanding their lifestyle and problems they face, the way they work, made me realize that there is a lot more in the world than what we choose to see. It helped me open my eyes and become more sensitive towards people. I was probably not so comfortable interacting with people earlier, but this experience really helped me open up and understand the nature of such situations.

Working on an event like anti child labor was a great experience as I learnt a lot about the issue, various unbelievable facts, visited places, interacted with children involved in this activity forcefully or by their own will and most importantly, I learned how to work in a team. CRY has various departments and all of them are interrelated. All departments work together effectively and efficiently. Being a new member in this organization, I never felt uncomfortable or difficult to interact with anybody. Working with such a team for an event like anti child labor was a wonderful experience. In the end, I would just say that there is still a long way to go and this just my first step.

Minakshi Girdhar

Intern, CRY