Railway Children

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Home for railway children

They don’t know what a daily routine is like. They live of begging and try to earn a bit of money by cleaning shoes, collecting empty bottles and carrying suitcases. They sleep at railway stations or in empty rail carriages; the trains take them across the country, often far away from their home: the so-called railway children.
 
As numerous as the children, as numerous are also the reasons, why they have joined the trains: some have lost their parents, others try to get away from them or the bad living conditions they find themselves in and another group is hoping to find something on the trains, which they didn’t have at home: friends or at least enough to live on.
In 2003, wortundtat started a project for these children in the small town of Chirala: a kind of emergency shelter in the direct vicinity of the station. Here they are looked after and receive a meal once a day. The children and young people learn what a daily routine looks like. The objective is to enable them to attend the wortundtat school in nearby Chilakaluripet and that their education provides them with a new perspective in life.
However, the first accommodation was soon too small as the opportunity to get help there quickly spread among the young people. A new place to stay was required. The new house, which was built not too far away from the old home, provides shelter for about 50 railway children.