Life is harsh in Chennai's teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, eleven-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter--and friendship--on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts.
The author will regularly interact with participants and classes doing the Global Readaloud.
Sign up to get blog updates and links to the latest resources, set up a Skype etc.
Hinduism is the religion of the majority of people in India and Nepal. It also exists among significant populations outside of the sub continent and has over 900 million adherents worldwide.
As India strives to make great strides in its economy and infrastructure, it is constantly reminded of its social reality that is based on an age-old caste system. The history of India has seen sporadic incidents of discrimination against a particular group of people, mostly under the attestation from the traditional systems of caste and untouchability.
The author will regularly interact with participants and classes doing the Global Readaloud.
Sign up to get blog updates and links to the latest resources, set up a Skype etc.
In India, the people who make their living by recycling waste are known as ragpickers. In New Delhi alone, there are 300,000 ragpickers, with another 300,000 in Mumbai, of whom 120,000 are under the age of 14.
The Concerned for Working Children is a not-for-profit secular, democratic development agency based in Bengaluru, India. Active since the late 1970s, we were one of the first organisations in India to focus on working children and their needs. We have since become widely recognised as a world leader in children’s rights, particularly children’s right to self determination.
“My father, he used to beat our whole family. Without any mistake. One day he beat my mom and he killed her,” he says, in the above video explaining that he hit her head into a wall.
Satender goes on to say that his father once beat him for an entire day for missing school. He decided that living on the street was safer than his own home. “If I go in the street, I will be beaten by police, but only once or twice in a day,” Satender says. “Not all day like my father is beating me.”
What started as a small learning centre with just 11 students is now a registered charitable trust that has impacted over 35,000 individuals with special needs across urban and rural areas.
Nearly 35 years after he was abandoned by his mother, and almost as many years trying to keep death at bay, Marana Gana Viji is today a funeral singer of some repute.
The Bridge Home by 
