Children of Ganges (CLICK ON THE LINK TO VIEW YOU TUBE VIDEO)

The Children of Ganges is a safe learning centre for children from very low income families living around the Ganges river in Rishikesh, India. Many of these kids have parents who are street hawkers or construction workers or in some cases, are terminally ill and cannot work at all. Although some of them go to nearby schools, this centre was founded as a means to supplement their education by teaching them self help skills. Purnima and I were fortunate to spend an incredible week with the kids recently. The enthusiasm and the creativity of these kids is nothing short of amazing and masks the very difficult circumstances most of them face at home. Although we went there to teach the kids, their attitude and outlook towards life taught us a lot more and we came back much wiser.

The centre however needs serious upgrading including new desks, more books and computers (the computers you will see in the video are very dated and don't work). Given that most of the kids in the centre are girls, we would also like to train them in self defence techniques (unfortunately this is the need of the hour for girls in India) and this will require us to hire specialist teachers. All this requires funding and we kindly request you to dig deep into your pockets and contribute generously. Please see the video attached from our recent trip to Rishikesh. We will keep you updated on developments and how these funds are being put to use.

Finally, if any of you are interested in travelling to India and volunteer with these children, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us.

Many thanks for your contributions,

Purnima & Rajiv

Children of Ganges -- CLICK ON LINK TO VIEW VIDEO