Hopegivers International Continues Campaign to Save 10,000 Orphans in India by 2006

An indigenous ministry in India’s Rajasthan state has the goal to save 10,000 orphans in India by the end of this year.

|PIC1|Hopegivers International, a ministry founded in the northwestern Indian state, is close to reaching its goal of providing homes for 10,000 orphaned and abandoned children in India by Dec. 31, 2005. Although more than two months remain in the year, Hopegivers is already caring for 8,958 children among its 87 orphanages throughout India.

“This is not just our national shame as Indians, but the shame of the whole civilised world,” said Dr. Samuel Thomas, president and CEO of Hopegivers International in reference to the 84 million orphaned and abandoned children in India.

“I believe this tragedy can and must be changed,” Thomas declared in a statement released by Hopegivers. “God wills it!”

The 84 million homeless children, as Thomas pointed out, are not all orphaned. For cultural reasons, women have to abandon their children in order to remarry and survive in society.

“Say the father died,” Thomas explained to AgapePress. “If the wife, who’s now a widow, is to survive in the community, she cannot work as a servant in somebody’s house because, since she is a widow, she is looked upon as a lady who is cursed and would bring curse to anybody she’ll be working for.”

“In order for her to get remarried,” he continued, “the first requirement from the new husband is [for the woman] to literally forsake and abandon the children. And that is why we have that many children on the streets of India.”

In addition to being abandoned by a living parent, many of the children taken in by Hopegivers also suffer from the caste system. Most of the children are Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables,” and face discrimination by higher castes.

“The people back home [India] they do not want Hopegivers to rescue children from the Dalits, untouchable background and make them equal leaders to the high caste or even better then them,” explained Thomas in a recent interview with The Christian Post during his short visit to the United States.

|TOP|Moreover, the people in India, of which over 98 percent are non-Christians, are unhappy with the fact that “97 percent of [Hopegivers] children [end up] in full time ministry,” he added.

In addition to a traditional education system following state curriculum, the Christian orphanages’ academic programs also include: Christian teachings, morning and afternoon prayer and Bible lessons every evening.

Despite the fact that Hopegivers has sponsorship for only 1,000 of the children that they raise, the ministry has accepted 7,958 in addition. The reason, Thomas said, is that “This is God’s work.

“These are his children,” he added. “I don’t have the guts to say to any child that comes to the gates and doesn’t want to go, ‘[I] don’t think we can take you because we don’t have a sponsor’ because that could be the next Mother Theresa, that could be Billy Graham, that could be C.T. Studd,” said Thomas.

“If there is one thing I don’t want to hear in my life time, it is an orphan growing up and becoming something and saying, ‘See? Hopegivers rejected me but this is what I have become.'”

Hopegivers International's “Operation: 10,000 Hopegivers” campaign, which will continue until the end of this year, is a project to partner 10,000 orphans in India with a sponsor. Thomas notes that the goal is not to find 10,000 orphans to care for by the end of the year, because the children want to come, but rather to obtain sponsors for them.

"I am looking for 10,000 people who are willing to give a dollar a day...but if an individual says how can I help an enormous problem to be solve? [I would respond] you can save one starfish. You can save one child," said Thomas.

Hopegivers International was founded by Dr. Samuel Thomas’ father, Bishop M.A. Thomas. The first orphanage began in 1977 with eight children. Now more than 40 years later, the ministry has expanded to include the establishment of 87 orphanages, 53 medical clinics, 190 schools with 88,000 students and more than 500 leper colonies among others. Hopegivers mainly work with the Dalits and outcasts in India.

"Operation: 10,000 Hopegivers" is only the beginning of Hopegivers International's larger vision to care for one million children by the year 2020.







Michelle Vu
Christian Today Correspondent