Day 27: The missing drop

I'm dedicating day 27 to this girl I met in the Secunderabad Landfill "Scavengers' Colony" as I call it. It's one of the several slum colonies on the edge of this massive city landfill serving the metro Hyderabad, India area. Most people have never heard of this city. However, it's among the world's 40 most populous cities at an estimated 8.2 million residents.

The local language here is Telugu, which is the mother tongue to over 80 million people, ranking it as the 15th most widely spoken language in the world—more than Korean, French or Italian. But the average person I meet has never heard of Telugu. Such is the contradiction of India, with its 1.1 billion citizens and 13 official languages.

Yet among all of this overwhelming statistical data, stands this one girl. A girl we can help. She's in a colony right beside the slum settlement where our "Children's Hope Center" is located. Here I met her family as they invited me into their make-shift home assembled from tattered tarps and vinyl ad banners they found in the trash.

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one. We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. —Mother Teresa

Along with our native team members, I've interviewed the parents of this colony, and they are very interested in enrolling their children, including this girl, at our Children's Hope Center. And we'd love to help. We just can't do it all by ourselves. That's where we can all come together to make a difference, for her and her friends here.

Our India farmland's profits are helping to supplement the budget of this outreach, but it's not enough to meet the growing needs. This is where your donation, however small, can make a real difference in the life of a child of the slums. Education coupled with proper nutrition can completely change the course of a child's life. The potential alternative routes for these children are quite desperate—many will end up as trafficking victims, being sold for labor or prostitution. Here's a summary I wrote describing the depth of the challenges these children face.

However, here's the other side of the equation. There are children we've rescued from child labor, now flourishing at our Children's Hope Center just a short walk from where I took the photograph above.

We're just $480 away from funding our 17th scholarship just through readers of this blog! That's huge! Follow this link to give any amount you can afford to chip in, it all makes a difference! Your gift will ensure that another child has a chance to break out of the cycle of extreme poverty, to get out of the dangerous work of sifting through the trash, onto the solid tracks of education and proper nutrition!

On to what I was able to cook up using a total of just $1 worth of food for these 3 meals...

Breakfast. Nothing to write home about, but it was a solid breakfast. 1/3 cup oatmeal with raisins and dash of cinnamon. Breakfast taco with plain 1-egg omelet, rice and beans. ▼

Lunch. Quite an inspirational breakthrough here. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I went a little conservative on rations for the first 25 days. That's left me with a nice surplus to finish out the challenge! Today I had an entire potato and an extra ration of pasta noodles. I was googling baked potato recipes and came across this one. It's a Swedish recipe called Baked Hasselback Potato, and let me tell you, it is something pretty awesome, especially when you're hungry. Also had an extra egg today, so after beating, I tried dropping it into the boiling pasta at one minute remaining and it gave it a really great consistency. Mixed in about three tablespoons of pasta sauce and I had quite a feast on my hands here. ▼

Dinner. Can't go wrong with tostadas, that's my motto. The crispy goodness of corn tortillas baked in the oven, topped with re-fried rice and beans mix and steamed cabbage and carrots, seasoned with your favorite seasonings, and bam, wow, it's fresh, not too heavy and really delicious! A very natural, healthful, wholesome dish! ▼

Take Action!

1) Please consider giving toward scholarships for children of the slums. Our goal is to cover a scholarship for 20 kids to get an education this next year. Every little bit helps!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to Peace Gospel. If you're in the UK, use this link.

3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!