A ten year old boy serves tea on all floors of our office building. He works all day and gets paid Rs 2000 per month for his efforts. Today we talked to him at length only to find out that he doesn't want to work (which is quite natural considering his tender age). He has a brother (younger or elder I don't know) and his parents in his family.
The boy has joined a new school now which would engage him from 12 - 5 P.M. everyday and would continue with his job from 5 P.M - 11 P.M.
We asked him to quit his job and concentrate on his studies and playing. We agreed to help him out by giving him his salary amount as well without having to work. This would help him to take care of his expenses and also would keep him away from the work which he doesn't like.
I somehow could not convince myself that this was the right way to go about it. I have a feeling that his move of ours might jolt his personal life and his relationship with his parents, brother and everyone associated to him. This philanthropy of ours might help him to get free time but would it necessarily be a good change in his life? We debated over this at length at our office and couldn't reach a conclusion.
Now I sought opinion of all the readers for a deeper analysis of this problem and the possible solutions. May be you can suggest a better way of going about this or even not going about this.
What all can be done?
5 comments:
Go Ahead with helping this Boy with Salary, In Addition a counseling is required so that he understand why he is getting this help.
Giving salary will help him for expenses but the free time he is getting will utilize for working somewhere else to earn extra money. Better way could be that call him to office in his free time with his study material. So he would not get the time to work somewhere else. Free time will be used for study and play only.
Ideally, its his parents who need to be counseled rather than him. I also agree that even if you pay him his salary, he may be asked who work somewhere else to get extra bucks. You can ask him to study and not work once, twice or even a few more times but not cannot keep a watch all the time. You should instead take help from Non Govt bodies so that they can take necessary action.
Rahul.. good that you used a correct medium... now I also feel sharing few points to ponder over this dilemma..
1. We saw that boy playing with those stray dogs.. if from tomorrow we take the entire responsibility for that boy.. will we ever allow him to go and play like that? Won't we try to later his taste, that matches our perspectives?
2. Wouldn't helping that boy be just like adding more money in bank accounts of the already rich? He is earning, studying.. even playing.. that way he is learning the lessons of life.. we just picked him out of a vim and wanted to do something.. wouldn't it be better to invest same money for somebody who had to stop attending school altogether due to money reasons?
Good Work buddy and everyone else at your office...
You mentioned that the child was not working willingly...In this case I would suggest you to talk to his parents. Possibilities may be there that they too do not want him to work but they are forced to do it...
If not, then, this decision, of you people financially adopting him [I feel extremely apologetic to use this word but I was not able come up with anything else...]...will give his parents a boost and may be they will change their mind and be optimistic...
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