Youth turning from high profile and lucrative careers to grappling with a societal problem with the ultimate goal of eradicating begging by children is a laudable task and a tall order too.
Working for nearly seven years among parents who are professional beggars and their children, the Generation Yuvaa has been able to bring 52 children to a rehabilitation home and send 39 of them to school.
The Generation Yuvaa is the result of pangs of separation engineering graduate B. Naresh Kumar suffered when he had planned to go to Australia to do his MS.
But when he decided to take up social work, none of his college mates had supported him. His father gave him Rs.35,000, to begin with.
But a 20-member core group, 200 activists, and 5,000 online supporters helped him build a strong organisation, always willing to take up challenges, in the last six to seven years by organising several campaigns involving thousands of students.
Naresh Kumar conducted several surveys, repeatedly approached child beggars and their parents to understand the root of the problem. While dropping out of school and staying at home are not really a serious problems, children taking to vices and crime are real threats, he points out.
It takes six months to over two years to strike a relationship and build trust, he says. Two families have been brought together and five children are now leading a normal life.
“We psychologically go down to the level of the beggars to understand them and engage them, and now feel more responsible towards them,” says Generation Yuvaa secretary K. Rakesh Reddy, a young engineer, who had given up his job with L&T in Bhutan to take up work here.
New plansNaresh Kumar now plans to raise another floor on Green House at Lakshminagar near Marripalem on the highway that sells gifts, hand-made paper, wooden sculpture pieces, paintings, and other articles supporting some artists. It also has a nursery. All proceeds from the sale go to support the children.
He has leased a 200 square yard site adjacent to start an “ethical living place” and training centre for parents and workshops for children on attitude and ethics.
Children will be told to respect and love parents and older people, and thereby build family bonds, explains Naresh Kumar. Ultimately, there should be no old-age homes, he asserts.
He hopes to resume work on handmade paper, which once was taken up, making soft toys, bags, clothes etc. Some parents are now asking for employment, and it is the best way of helping them give up begging and sending children to school.
The idea is to set up 100 units with each unit taking 10 persons over the next five years. “We want to make it sustainable so that 3,000 to 4,000 children are rehabilitated,” he says.
