The word India is synonymous with poverty. People have mental pictures of beggars with sores, open sewers and listless cows languishing in the road. The sad truth is, those images are real for much of India.
Relli is a tiny village in the Himalayan Mountains of the Darjeeling region, where enormous snowcapped mountains touch the sky and tea plantations cover the plains and terraces in an emerald green blanket. Children from this region have been plucked like tea leaves from the hills and valley, taken from the streets and lives of abject poverty, to join the large family at the Least of These Children’s Home.
Trips with a Mission opened the LOT Children’s Home in August 2002. When we visited the region months earlier we were inundated with children who desperately needed care. Every child had a heartbreaking story and we were overjoyed to be in a position to help because there was no one else.