She is tired, she is walking all night with her daddy and others slum dwellers to go far away, in a place where perhaps she can earn money for survival for others few days. She is poor, her shoes are broken, the little dresses she’s wearing makes her feel cold. She can’t stop, continues to walk holding her father’s hand who randomly keeps talking with her to keep her awake. Sunrise is coming and with it’s, also the light at last, around her only the darkness.
She is tiny as 5 years old but is trying to stay strong and doesn’t fall asleep. She’s hungry, cold and thirsty. Chandni was born in a slum in Noida and at the age of 5, she moves from one place to another inorder to perform street magic to scrape in order to gather some coins for the only meal of the day. She started very early to sell roses and corn to people at the traffic lights and everybody looks the other way, they treat her like a ghost, a pariah, they isolate her. Chandni was also exposed to rag picking, but not always the money earned allowed her to feed.
She shakes her daddy’s hand, it’s very cold. She was thinking about the blanket riddled left at her shack, at this moment she might need it, thinking about her friends which now are sleeping. Tomorrow she couldn’t play with them because she has to go, far away, she needs money, socks and clean dresses.What she needs more than anything in the world is learning to read. While she walks down the street observing all of those road signs, she don’t know what they say, “I don’t know how to read and I’ll never learn”, she thought.
But she never knew that in a few years, her whole life was about to change…
One day in her slum arrived some people, new faces, people that she had never seen before but of which she feels that she could trust. After they met, they took her upon their wings.
The members of this NGO helped Chandni and others slum’s kids to get an education through opening new education centres to connect more underprivileged kids to each other in the same place: the school ! !
Chandni decides to become an active member of the NGO in order to help kids in their education and for her commitment and hard work, and was appointed as District Secretary of the initiative and also the editor of a newspaper called ‘Balaknama’ written by and for the kids in slums. She loves her job and especially helps poor kids like her to realize their dream starting from their education.
She took part at important live shows on Radio Mirchi and India Today and was a guest of the prestigious TedTalks in Bangalore where she gave speech to raise public awareness on the importance of education in kids’ life to help them to be whatever they want to be when they will grow up.
Chandni is grateful to the people who work in the NGO that one day went in her slum for giving her education. She’ll never forget them and in what way they changed her life!
She now has set up her own NGO called “Voice of Slum” yes, because slums and their kids really need someone who talks about them, to let somebody listen to their needs and save them from an unjust life. Chandni made the education of underprivileged children her sole mission.
Through the NGO, Chandni helps kids of slums to pursue education, to have a future and fulfil their dreams; she knows kids who want to become a taxi driver, a scientist, a store owner, a doctor, but they don’t have the possibility to achieve their dream because of the situation they are living now.
But you can help them. Help them to become what they want to be, starting with giving them education.
Chandni is a successful woman and a model for all the kids that fight for education, she wants to help and pass on a message of hope and victory amongst them.
Help them to have a better life, to aim for a normal life like yours and that of your children who take for granted to have a meal, a roof over their head and be sure to go out in the morning to school. But for kids in the slum, it’s not that, you can give them the possibility to begin their life’s journey that brings them to realize their dreams.
They were born in a slum but the slum wasn’t born in them, so help them.
Contribute to these little innocent smiles at https://www.desiredwings.com/VoiceofSlum
