Dalit dogs graduate from slums

|PIC1|India’s outcaste Dalits have faced millennia of discrimination and oppression, but thanks to the work of Operation Mercy, the development wing of Operation Mobilisation India, a new future is opening up for the country's lowest caste.

At the request of Dalit leaders, Operation Mercy is overseeing education centres for the ‘untouchable’ castes.

After ten years, the first 28 students to begin and complete their studies at the schools have just graduated. Their smiling faces during a special graduation ceremony bore testimony to their transformed lives.

Despite India’s recent economic advances, the 250 million Dalits outside the Hindu caste system face extreme poverty and every conceivable form of discrimination.

As powerfully shown in the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire film, the country’s growing wealth does not reach the untouchables of society. Dalits cannot consume the same food and water as people of a higher caste background and face daily humiliation, performing jobs that include cleaning toilets with their bare hands.

OM is responding to the Dalits’ cries for help and now oversees 80 schools across India that are providing 14,000 Dalit children with an education.

In consultation with local communities, the students follow an English-medium curriculum emphasising a Christian worldview of personal worth to God.

Dalit Freedom Network President Dr. Joseph D’souza was one of a thousand guests attending the ceremony. “I could not hold back my tears,” he said after watching the graduates march forward to receive their certificates.

Each Dalit Education Centre also hosts adult evening classes, health seminars and self-help groups. Thus, whole communities are being equipped and empowered for a far brighter future than they ever imagined possible.

With the original vision of opening a hundred such facilities by 2010 close to completion, plans to open a further 200 Dalit Education Centres are now being made.

On the web: www.daliteducation.org