The Children's Project School - Wherever the Need

The Children’s Project School

The Real Miracle of This School

The real miracle of this school is how only three or four years of education have already transformed the children. The school staff must start by teaching new students basic hygiene, daily dental care and the assurance there will be enough food for everyone so they don’t need to fight for their share. While education is considered essential to the children’s development, the staff at CPS believes that character building is just as important as imparting knowledge.

Once these basic human values are learned the children begin to relax with the understanding they are finally safe from harm and their survival is assured. Freed from their fears of brutality at the hands of virtually everyone in their lives and no longer chained to a daily struggle for survival, they become sponges for knowledge because they know it is the door to a life they could not even dream of previously.

Text Box: As we develop good character we also nourish the inner life of the children, and provide emotional support so they can become strong, self-confident and capable adults. Just as importantly, we believe in an abundance of hugs and love to allow our children to feel valued and secure. Our nurturing environment helps them to discover what real love is and to realize that this love is a resource they can call upon within themselves. Michael Galligan, School Founder

CPS moves to the country

Now the children have personal goals (a concept they never knew before): one dreams of becoming a veterinarian and studies constantly in order to be able to attend college. Others express interest in becoming teachers, social workers, or helping destitute children escape the life they themselves once knew.

The Children’s Project has purchased 13 acres of land on a lush mountaintop in the Western Ghat mountains. The property is a functioning coffee plantation where bird life abounds. The school plans to create a biosphere on the property. It will provide an environmental education on the diverse wildlife and plant life of the Western Ghats and will be a model for how to work in partnership with nature. The school will teach children the need for conservation and the correct use of natural resources.

Alternative construction techniques will create a model of sustainability and ecological respect. The first three small buildings were completed and all the children moved to the site in early September 2007. As new buildings are added the school has plans to take in AIDS orphans from Chennai and other areas of India.

Taking children from a cruel and degrading life on the streets and placing them in the serenity of nature is a unique concept that could have far-ranging applications for similar programs. We invite you to be a part of this truly unique project by helping with operating expenses or committing to underwrite one or more buildings that will be constructed in 2007-08.

The Children’s Project School is changing the grim reality of life on the streets for children in India. Most of the children in CPS were once street beggars. You can see by their faces how much life has changed for them.

Beginning in 1998 and continuing for the next five years a San Francisco couple living in south India sponsored some 35 destitute children in various private schools in an effort to give those children a chance to break out of the cycle of poverty they had always known.

This indirect assistance to street children took a sudden and unexpected turn one night in 2003 when four of the girls Michael and Alele were sponsoring at a local school appeared at their door, bruised and bleeding from beatings they had received and pleading for asylum with the only people they felt they could trust. Of course, the frightened girls were taken into the couple’s home. When they heard the children’s sad stories of almost constant physical and sexual abuse at the hands of family members, strangers and school staff, Michael and Alele knew their days of sponsorship were over and from that point on they committed to taking personal care of the children who came to them. As word spread among the destitute street children that a foreign couple was providing sanctuary to children like themselves, more and more began to show up on their doorstep and a new school was begun.

Today the Children’s Project residential school cares for 32 children: 28 girls and 4 young boys, most of them former beggars. A visit to the school is a humbling experience for every visitor. Knowing the children come from the hard life of the streets, one expects to find kids with rough edges. Quite the contrary, the children show great love and caring toward each other and genuine respect for their teachers. Looking into young eyes that have seen unspeakable atrocities, a visitor might anticipate seeing fear or anxiety. But instead you see trust, openness and innocence.

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Left to right: Michael Galligan, CPS founder, with Lakshmi, Tiruputamma (who is blind) and her daughter Malleshwari. Both girls were formerly beggars on the street.