Street kids offer Bangalore Salesian the best lesson of life
Inspired by the Gospel of Luke, Fr George Kollashany has been working with street kids since 1975. Children have changed educators’ approaches and policies. The way they face the challenges "is an inspiration". Kids are the "pulse of society".
Bangalore (AsiaNews) – "Working on the edges, especially among street kids, has helped me stay productive in my missionary life," said Fr George Kollashany, a Salesian in Bangalore, Karnataka.
Since 1975, he has worked with poor “at risk” children, he told AsiaNews. For him, living with those who live on the margins of society "is the best school of life.” Indeed, “Working with poor street children has transformed my missionary life,” he said. “I learnt so much about them”.
Fr Kollashany said that he was inspired to work with children when he was 16, when he heard an excerpt from the Gospel of Luke (4: 6-20) in which Jesus preaches in the synagogue in Nazareth “to bring glad tidings to the poor”. After that, he joined Don Bosco's Salesians and during his theology studies he began helping youth development.
He feels "inspired and reinvigorated by how young people face challenges and risks." Like one 16-year-old boy "who is struggling to pass Grade 10 exam after dropping out school in Grade 5. During that time, he managed to pay off his father's debt of 200,000 rupees (US$ 3,100), working as a rag picker.”
“With the money he earns, 300 rupees a day (US$ 4.65), he is able to feed his invalid grandmother as well as his mother who was disabled after her husband tried to kill her by setting her on fire with kerosene. He has even been able to buy a bicycle for himself and pay for his brother’s studies.”
"I'm excited by the way has been able to create bonds between people, the same people who lent him money to build his own home."
For Fr Kollashany, street kids "are shaping the future of humanity as well as their lives. It is the law of nature. Being with them and learning from them is the best way to grow and learn not lose one’s youthful passion and childhood."
"On the edges, among those who are on the margins and outside of the dominant trends, one can measure the pulse of society, and the essence of a community and purify its values like a fire."
The Salesian clergyman notes that his approach towards the kids has changed over the years "because when it comes to dealing with children, the same programmes, schemes or policies cannot be implemented. They require a change in aptitude”. Case in point: skipping school.
"Running away is not a crime,” he says. “It is the immediate response of a child in the face of abuses, unacceptable situations, or even attraction to something new. Skipping school is just part of growing up, even though it is difficult to accept at the beginning."
According to the priest, "child policies have to change." In the 1970s, "The Juveniles Act considered young people as delinquents and treated them as criminals. That system had to change. Now with the 2000 law, kids are deemed in need of care and protection. There are no longer terms like 'delinquent' or 'degenerate' children.”
These kids are not criminals. On the contrary, they are people who need someone who cares for them and protects them."
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