The children at the Balikagram

Around 50 girls from different states in India, irrespective of their castes and religions, stay together at the Balikagram. Most of them are daughters of leprosy patients while a few of them are actual orphans. Most of them go back to meet their parents at the end of the school year and return after the vacations for the new school year.

 The children get their basic education in the English medium school which we have there in the complex, which is one of the best in the area. Their needs are taken care of in the Balikagram. But being a girl, especially in a society like India, it is not right to send them off once they are of age without equipping them with a way to make a living and fend for themselves once outside. That is a great struggle and worry in the minds of the sisters and staff in the Balikagram. I was told that one or two of the girls is now staying outside in a hostel studying for her nursing. One is studying for BCA and another for TTC. Each of the girls, the sisters wish, will find a suitable vocation for themselves by the time they leave the Balikagram. That is their daily prayer, that is their fervent hope.