Elena and Dani

Sponsors

Although I have travelled a lot, I must confess that India was never in my travelling wish list. However, I was interested in knowing first-hand about the projects that Children Are the Future (CAF) were supporting in that country. That is why, when one of the members of CAF offered the opportunity to join a field trip to see the work the NGO does there and share their experience, I did not hesitate for a second. This is how I ended up embarking on a flight to Chennai, Tamil Nadu in February 2013. During two weeks, we witnessed the progress of the projects that CAF supports in this Southern State of India, visiting the children and families that benefit from CAF’s support.

At the end of my trip, and after sharing some days with one of CAF’s local partners in India, CET, I had the opportunity to visit and meet in person Chittra in the village where she lives. Behind each family that CAF supports there is a personal story, most often so hard that it is difficult to believe and assimilate. The reality of these women, along with their children, are so terrible that when you have them in front of you and you hear the story from them, as it was my case, you only have three options: escape this reality, be a simple witness of it, or commit to change it.

I will never forget Chittra, the emotion and, at the same time, the feeling of helplessness that her gestures, her face, her words expressed. Even if I could only understand her words after the translation into English from Tamil, I could feel them. Chittra is an admirable woman and a fighter that has decided to face the horror to go on and start a new life with her children with the help and sponsoring of CAF. The tenderness and admiration in the eyes of her son when he was looking at his mother telling us her story, gives all sense to the work that CAF is doing and merits all our support and commitment. Now I can see how Chittra has managed to improve her life and that of her children, with the help of CAF, other women in her same situation, and most of all her work, strength and determination. Thanks to this, her children go to school and have a promising future next to their mother.

Sometimes we have to think that even if we can do little or nothing in front of such terrible realities. But, as Mother Theresa would say, “We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something”