Orphans // Current

Forgotten Voices: From the Mountain - Part 2

AIDS, orphans, and a people without hope. Zimbabwe.... more

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Stop 8 of 25: Their cries haunt me & make me cry

Yesterday, I promised to share a personal story about some children that I think about... more

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Good causes are hard to come by . .

Subscribe to Forgotten Voices, a nonprofit supporting orphans in Africa on Youtube.... more

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Forgotten Voices: Meet James

Meet James. Listen to him share how Forgotten Voices is helping the kids in his... more

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Empowering Forgotten Voices in Southern Africa

Helping orphans in Africa's poorest nations.... more

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Elton John wants to adopt Ukrainian child

Pop star Elton John and longtime partner David Furnish are interested in trying to... more

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Attention artists, inventors, and small biz entrepreneurs: apply for a GO Ingenuity Fellowship

GO Campaign is a US nonprofit dedicated to bettering the lives of orphans and... more

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2 months ago
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Swaziland, Africa - Phindile of YouthAssets Encourages Girls to Focus on Education

envisionGood.tv met up with Phindile, Youth Advisory Board Member of YouthAssets, in... more

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Innovative Use of Technology: Mobile Phones & Selling Airtime as Currency in Swaziland, Africa

Swaziland, Africa - In July 2009, envisionGood.tv traveled with Jennifer Sly, founder... more

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envisionGood.tv talks w/ TibusisoM at BarCampSwaziland, a tech event hosted by YouthAssets

envisionGood.tv talks with TibusisoM, multimedia student and participant at... more

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Jennifer Sly, founder: YouthAssets, talks about Google Phone & Google Maps in Swaziland, Africa

Swaziland, Africa - July 2009: Jennifer Sly, Founder of YouthAssets, brought us with... more

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Meet Mrs. Maposa

This grandmother has spent the past 14 years volunteering with the local AIDS Project... more

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From the mountains - part 1

Video from Zimbabwe courtesy of Forgotten Voices.

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Nanny and boy orphaned in Mumbai move to Israel

After hiding for hours in the besieged Jewish center in Mumbai, Sandra Samuel suddenly... more

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12 months ago
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Millionaire arrested for orphanage sex trade

A wealthy Philadelphia businessman was arrested for international sex trade of russian... more

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12 months ago
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Helping Art Liberate Orphans

How are American kids (and adults) supporting orphans in Mexico, India, Cambodia,... more

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Fighting in Kashmir gives rise to orphanages

Gazi Abdullah, a gentle, articulate 11-year-old considers himself fortunate. He describes a life filled with friends, games of cricket, and top scores in math.

But it hasn't always been so. Without a trace of self-pity, he tells how his father was killed in crossfire between separatist militants and the Army when he was two years old.

"After that our home was not in a good condition," he says, alluding to the wretched poverty that he, his mother, and his sister endured for years.

Today, Gazi lives at an orphanage in Srinagar, Kashmir's main city, with 350 other children ages 6 to 18, more than half of whom are victims of Kashmir's 20-year insurrection against India.

Between 60,000 and 100,000 children in this state of 5.5 million people are thought to be orphans – a term here that refers to children who have lost their fathers and whose mothers are too poor to look after them.

Before 1989, when separatists began their uprising against India, Kashmir had few orphanages. Srinagar had just one, with fewer than 20 children. But today there are half a dozen large institutions in the city – and even more scattered throughout the Kashmir Valley.

"This was never part of our culture before all the violence," says Saifullah Khalid, the principal of the Muslim Welfare Society-run orphanage where Abdullah lives.

"Before, people would never have taken their brother's children to a strange place and left them there," he says, gesturing at the orphanage's bare, unfurnished interior. "They would have adopted them. But with the huge numbers of deaths, this became impossible," he says.

Kashmiris have responded generously to the plight of orphaned children by donating to the orphanages, "especially at Ramadan," says Dr. Khalid. This orphanage, like several others here, receives some funding from the Indian government that allows the organization to give monthly bursaries to several hundred fatherless girls, which allow them to remain at home and in school.

"And we do what we can with these boys," Khalid adds, briefly pressing his hand to his heart, "to give them the love and affection that they miss from their families."

Nighat Shafi Pandit, a well-known Kashmiri activist and chairwoman of the Help Foundation that runs schools for orphans and other poor children in and around Srinagar, says that at the height of the conflict in the mid-1990s, there were days when up to 100 people, mostly men, were killed.

She regrets that the government did not give more support more quickly to the widows these deaths created that could have allowed their children to remain at home.

************CONTINUES BELOWGazi Abdullah, a gentle, articulate 11-year-old considers himself fortunate. He... more