“Suffer the little children…”

Mumbai’s voters stayed at home in droves this week because they did not trust the politicians of any party. But doing the job of politicians and bureaucrats in several places is a group of social activists whose work is trusted by a number of Indians. Renuka Narayanan elaborates.

Mumbai’s voters stayed at home in droves this week because they did not trust the politicians of any party. But doing the job of politicians and bureaucrats in several places is a group of social activists whose work is trusted by a number of Indians. World Vision, an international child-focused Christian humanitarian group, working in 150 centres across India, says it has 40,000 Indian children on its rolls whose care and education are sponsored by well-placed Indians: 85 per cent (34,000) of these sponsors are Hindus.

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“The investment in each child touches at least four more children per child,” says Samuel Nirmal, the 50-ish Group Director, Public Engagements, of World Vision. “Yes, we are driven by our faith. But go to any of our 150 projects across India and independently verify, ask the communities we work with if we do any conversion activity,” he says.

World Vision was named in the Kandhamal crisis by the Hindutvists as a mischievous Christian missionary organization attempting to harvest souls by spreading pro-Christian, anti-Hindu tracts in the region.

“We had to pull out of Orissa,” rues Jayanth Vincent, Director, Media Relations, World Vision. “It is true that we are Christians. But our religion teaches service. We are a multi-denominational Christian group: Catholics, Protestants, everybody. Service is our agenda, not conversion.”

So why do they run into trouble with Hindutvists? “We work with the very poor. For instance we help the rural and urban poor access micro-credit from nationalized banks. When we do that, the local moneylenders and labour-contractors (Hindus) are driven out of business. Village women whose children are in bonded labour to landowners build a kitty and redeem their children one by one.

So the easiest and most believable charge to level at us is ‘conversion activity’. For a brief period we will have to alienate such people. But would so many other Hindus trust us if we were going against their religion? Indians do know that a Christian organization is usually accountable and well-organised,” says Vincent.

World Vision began in the 1950s with an American journalist, Bob Pierce, a war correspondent sent to cover the Korean War. Shaken by the plight of local children, this devout Christian drew on his faith and preached his child-focused mission as Christian duty. Today they claim members in 17 countries including India, Finland, Japan Australia, UK, USA and several others in Europe.

Besides the individual donors who sponsor children, there are reportedly in all, 2 lakh, 40 thousand Indian children in the World Vision umbrella.

The six urgent issues for children that the group identifies and works in are: education, child labour, malnutrition, HIV and AIDS, protection (from abuse) and disaster (as in flood and tsunami-affected children).

The project locations ring an all-India carillon: Lalitpur, Moradabad, Ballia, Malda, Gingee, Dharwar, Kolkata, Betul, Jabalpur, Ratlam, Nagpur, Daryapur, Mon, Ukhrul, Udalguri and Chhimtipui….Vellore, Virudhanagar, Rajamundhry, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Siliguri, Dehradun, Jaipur, Guwahati…

“We’re looking now for inter-faith organizational tie-ups in HIV and AIDS work with reputed institutions,” says Vincent; for in good faith, “The righteous are bold as a lion.” (Proverbs 28:1).