Hello Radha, yes, I did read that you were 14 then with your sweetly generous intention. I wonder why you felt you couldn’t use your pocket money the way you wanted to?

I took your article to mean in a general sense, that it’s enough to relate to vulnerable people on a one to one basis, and affirming their humanity on an emotional level. But its systemic oppression over generations that creates such poverty… and so really the only way for change to happen is for over- consumers to take less. On a national and global level, that’s really what needs to happen.

But it’s hard as the first resistance is from our own familes.

Sigh…

But I was really inspired by the Nobel prize winner of 2014, the great Kailash Satyarthi, who empathised with a five year old boy shining shoes when he started his first day, at school, also at age 5. It’s remarkable what he did as a teenager, renouncing his Brahman family’s privileges, changing his name and then eventually, setting up campaigns to stop child labour and that other evil, child trafficking.