Brian Gavin’s Son, Aaron Gavin, Meets the Children in Andhra Pradesh, India…

In a previous blog post, we mentioned that our son, Aaron, was spending the summer in India in the state of Andhra Pradesh, with his base being in Hyderabad. So many of our blog readers and customers have been touched by the work that he will be doing there and we appreciate all the notes and calls that we have received.

An excerpt from an e-mail he wrote highlights the enormity of the task at hand:

"…in order to attempt the feat of insuring that each child remain in school, one needs to know, at the very least, about the status of children in India and their relationship to the education system. So here it is: there are currently 7,639,000 girls and 7,936,000 boys between the school-going ages of 5-14 in that area alone. It is interesting, and quite shocking to note that a person over the age of 14 is no longer considered a child in India. Many of these children work in a variety of industries, from agriculture to domestic work and even construction. For those children who are not working and have the luxury of enrolling in school, Andhra Pradesh has established 62,464 Primary Schools (classes I-V; ages 5-10), 17,957 Upper Primary Schools (classes VI-VII; ages 11-12) and 16,937 High Schools (classes VIII-X; ages 13-14) to meet their educational needs. When I say that many of the children of Andhra Pradesh work and that it is a luxury to go to school, I mean it quite literally ….."

He e-mailed us pictures taken in his first week there and we thought we would share some with you.