Vision for the Future

This is our vision for the future:

• To add more boys from the streets as residents in the hostel and send them to school.
  
  
• To develop homes, with a housemother, in different areas of Bangalore.
  
  
• To provide 24-hour drop-in centers with facilities for bathing, sleeping, medical care, and play.
  
  
• To set up training centers, teaching marketable and useful skills, which will provide self-sufficiency and independence.
  
  
• To encourage local people to offer apprenticeships.
  
  
• To support and act as an information resource to other churches and organizations that wish to set up and develop similar shelters.
  
  

Street children represent the end point of a complex set of factors, which require a multitude of resources and efforts to address the problem. A situation that has been created due to the existing social, political, and economic pressures in society, needs to be addressed at the root of the problem, through a attitudinal change.

While meeting both the immediate and long-term needs of the individual child, Agape's strategies aim at creating an awareness of the situation that forces the child onto the street. We also aim to create a movement that will challenge the exploitative situation imposed on the street child, a situation that has sadly robbed children of their right to a joyful safe childhood.

However, change is not an easy process. A change that demands a modification in attitudes, as well as change in the social, economic, and political situation, is a slower process. Policy makers, industry, society, even the Church, will need to view the street children with compassion and sensitivity.

This is the only way forward towards ensuring a better future for the children, and we strongly believe that this is only possible through commitment and perseverance.

Agape's efforts must be seen as a highway in the direction of ensuring a life of dignity for street children. But in the final analysis, it is important to emphasize that responsibility for the child ultimately rests with individual parents, teachers, communities, and the Church. And the sooner that this is realized, the sooner progress can be made.