What to make of it all.

Now I’m back home and reflecting on what has been a memorable week. I will long remember the amazing Save the Children team in India, the many wonderful children and families we met, the projects that we saw, and the new friends I’ve made with the wonderful people on the supporters team who travelled there with me.

I had thought that today I would write something to summarise the week, and then yesterday I read my new friend Terry’s blog. He has written so beautifully about his reactions that straight away I wanted to share it. I agree with everything he has written…..

Save the Children do some great work and we have seen some wonderful projects over the last week. They make a real difference to the life chances of some very deprived and vulnerable children and I felt very proud at times to, literally, ‘wear the shirt’. Despite the fantastic work that Save the Children do many of the children’s circumstances that we met were pretty grim. You can’t put a gloss on living in a slum where the average space per family is little more than 6ft by 6ft and knowing your rights means very little if those rights are not realised. I still fear that many of the girls will be mums long before they are out of their teens and the boys will have to leave school too in order to become daily wage labourers. I wouldn’t want my children growing up in those circumstances and neither would you. So the work of Save the Children remains as needed and as vital as ever. But it would be wrong to portray the children we met solely as victims. They are resilient and optimistic for their futures. They knew how to play, laugh and have fun and they certainly didn’t seek out sympathy or charity. I will not forget them. They confirmed my view that whatever their nationality, culture , religion or anything else you can throw in the mix , childhood  has a universal commonality and the children in the slums of Delhi or the deprived rural areas of Rajasthan will have more in common with my children and your children than they will have differences. I also believe that it’s up to the adults of the world to defend (vigorously) that notion of childhood.

So, with apologies for the cliché … my journey to India with Save the Children is over. But for the children I feel privileged to have met and with whom, if only briefly, our lives met and connected, their journey of life is only just beginning. I hope that they get the chance to fulfil their undoubted potential. To them I say thank you for being pivotal in one of the most significant weeks of my life. Take care, good luck on your journey, and travel well.

Thank you Terry. I can’t think of a better summary of what we experienced  last week.