Imagine you are a child and your daily routine is to get up early every morning to go and pick through trash with your mother. You and your family are “untouchables” in your society which means you are treated as outcasts, undesirables. You don’t have many options when it comes to jobs so in order to survive, you have to pick through garbage to find plastic bottles to sell. This was Asha’s reality.
Her world was tough, bleak. She spent her days trudging through streets and alleyways strewn with garbage, hungry because she left home without having any breakfast. The stench of the heaps of trash and filth assailed her nostrils as she searched for plastic items that could be sold. She sorted, graded and sold whatever she could find.
When it was time for Asha to go to school she dreaded it because she feared the rejection of her teachers and classmates. None of the children wanted to sit next to her or play with her. She alone with no friends. Asha knew why the others didn’t want to be around her. It was because she picked trash for a living. She had no choice. She was trapped in the cycle of poverty and the door to better future was barred to her. Asha wanted to learn but she was afraid to go to school.
For I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord, plans for peace and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope – Jeremiah 29:11
When Asha’s father heard about a Gospel for Asia supported Bridge of Hope center, he encouraged her to go. He knew that Bridge of Hope offered help to people in need, especially to those whom society considered to be the lowest of people and he knew that the Bridge of Hope Center would care for her and provide her with the things he couldn’t.
Asha showed up at the Bridge of Hope carrying a plastic bag full of school books, dressed in tattered and smelly clothes, her face dirty and unwashed. Unlike the reception she normally received at school, Asha was welcomed by the staff. They loved and cared for her. They took the time to help her to keep neat and clean. She was given a backpack to replace her makeshift book bag and then school supplies and other useful gifts.
Within a year, Asha’s life was completely transformed. She was fast learner and developed strongly in her studies. She no longer went hungry as every school day she enjoyed a meal at the center. Thanks to the staff, Asha has learned how to keep herself clean and she participates in all the activities at the center. Her Dad couldn’t be happier, “My daughter is getting her daily needs met through the Bridge of Hope center. Now she is having good food, and she is healthy now. We are very happy to see her growth. She feared to go to school, but now she is never absent from school.”
Asha no longer has to pick up trash or feel alone and rejected by teachers and other students. Instead she thrives under the love and attention she receives at the Bridge of Hope center and is excelling at school. The door that society had barred her from because of her background, God cleared through Bridge of Hope. Hope for a better future was now in her grasp. No more trading plastic bottles. No more rummaging through garbage to maintain the family because her father was paralyzed and couldn’t provide for them.
You can help other children like Asha to have a better life, a bright future by supporting the Bridge of Hope centre. Bridge of Hope is reaching out to the hopeless and rejected “through education, daily meals, character-building activities, lessons on good hygiene, and by setting positive examples of love and good morals. There is a bridge for these children that gives them a chance to rise above the cycle of hopelessness they have always known.”
Help to give hope. Sponsor a child today.
“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”
– B.B. King
Sources: Gospel for Asia; The Borgen Project
