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Parenting the Parentless

Author:	David Strickland	Created:	4/4/2007 11:25 PM
Ok well parenting your own kids can be tricky enough but parenting someone elses can be a pain even if they are only on loan. Why would anyone in thier right mind want to parent 100 screaming orphans that you can't return. Much less why would you do it half way around the world. This is our Adventures or misadventures in starting and running an orphanage in India.

Case of the wrong Caste

By David Strickland on 2/17/2010 4:06 PM

Still on the job hunt. Downturn in the economy has put a pretty good dent in the short-term contract market. Looks like we may be back here longer then we first thought.

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Back Stateside for a bit

By David Strickland on 2/1/2010 12:40 PM

We are back stateside for a few months. We have decided to expand the work and have returned to the states to see if we can save up some money for a larger facilite.

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Out of Surgery and doing fine

By David Strickland on 8/4/2009 1:47 AM

One of our girls had to go in for heart surgery. She's out of surgery and doing fine.

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Happy New Year Merry Christmas.

By David Strickland on 1/8/2009 4:18 PM

A new year has come. Looking back on the last year feels better then it used to knowing your having an impact makes a lot of difference. But to be perfectly honest that doesn't mean there aren't days I wish I didn't have nearly 20 people dependent on my paycheck.

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School for the girls

By David Strickland on 8/17/2008 10:35 AM

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Where to go when you've nothing left

By David Strickland on 6/2/2008 1:38 AM

We got a phone call a couple days ago. A mother who had lost her home her husband and everything else. except her two children. One was 10 the other was just about to start college. She wondered if we could help. She wanted us to take care of the daughter. Instead we told her we would take care of both her and her daughter until she was able to do it on her own again.

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Banking India Style.

By David Strickland on 5/9/2008 12:36 AM

One of those things you just kind of take for granted in America and never think twice about. When I first came to India 5 years ago I opened a Citibank account or to be more precise it was opened for me by my employer. Citibank was good their service was slow and if you ever needed to actually go to a counter it was a nightmare of long lines, angry customers and rude staff but at least they seemed reliable.

Recently we wanted to open accounts. One for the orphanage two personnal accounts one for my wife and I and one for the company.

So ICICI was the bank the company I worked for when I first got here used so we started there. A representitive came to the office I filled out all the paperwork etc. Weeks passed. Finally I get a response it seems my signature didn't match the signature on my passport. So we tried it again. Weeks pass again rejected because my signature didn't match. So again they came this time I sit for an hour practicing my signature to get it identical to how I signed my passport....

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Lies.

By David Strickland on 5/4/2008 1:14 AM

We have two contacts in the area where we went to get the girls that we thought were going to help us track down the children in the greatest need. Our first contact was the pastor of the local church. As Mercy's rented car drove onto the property, she noticed some changes had taken place since we were there the previous time. The church had been fixed up and there was a new house being built on the property.

Now one of the local men that was acting as a guide for Mercy had already tried several times to disuade her from going to see the pastor but Mercy insisted. He said the pastor would try to get us to take the children of all his relatives instead of children that really needed help. Well she insisted we've known the pastor for almost 5 years and though we don't know him well we knew him better than the villager. Mercy got down from the car and after formalities sure enough the pastor began to try to convince Mercy to take the children of his relatives. So they went to the village to meet pastor's relative who was a 16 year old pregnant women with a 2 year old daughter. According to the wife, her husband was struck dead by a demon when he walked out of the house one morning. As the pastor spoke to the 16 year old mother, she clutched onto her little daughter like a life perserver. One glance at the mother and you knew her only connection with her dead husband was the little girl clutching her knees. Her father felt though evidently that the child would be better off in an orphanage, the uncles all agreed but one glance at the women and you knew she didn't. So Mercy decided not to take the girl with her. Finally pastor started talking about his own granddaughter. We eventually found out that he was building a house for his daughter and her husband there on the property and felt he needed to send her granddaughter with us. Somewhere along the way the pastor had lost the point. We weren't here to take children away from parents that loved them and wanted to care for them. We care for the parentless. Children that either have no parents left. Obviously this was getting her nowhere so Mercy left. Determined that this "pastor" was no pastor at all if he was willing to abandon his own granddaughter.

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20% of all orphans don't like Chocolate Icecream

By David Strickland on 4/26/2008 3:46 AM

Ok, well maybe my methods aren't exactly scientific; perhaps my sampling is a bit small, and my conclusion too general. However, were we ever in for a shock. Who ever heard of a child that doesn’t like Chocolate Ice Cream? It was their first night here at the Home, so we figured it would be good to get them out of the house for a treat. About four blocks from the house is an Ice Cream Store, so we all walked up and we got a scoop for each girl. Well, I guess we kind of figured they might not have tried it before. But women always like chocolate, right? …and kids always like Ice Cream. So we figured it was a safe bet. Of the 10 girls, two of them took one bite, wrinkled up their nose and didn't want any more. OK, so what do you do with kids that don't know what a cartoon is, can't understand English and don't like ice cream, in order to get their minds off of what they have lost, what once was, and what could have been if only ... Today we tried toys, a couple of jump ropes and some 2$ teddy bears. It appears...

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Short Listing

By David Strickland on 4/25/2008 1:03 AM

Back in the day when I used to look for a job, instead of looking for people to hire, I can remember getting emails that said I had been shortlisted. It's been a year since my Resume was active on Monster in the US, but I still get e mails that say I've been "shortlisted". Once I started my own company I realized better what that means. Recently I needed to hire a developer, so I posted an ad and got almost 1000 responses. Ok so we "shortlisted". But in the end, it never really changed my life to find out Microsoft or IBM or HP "shortlisted" me. In the end all it means is they actually read my resume instead of just deleting it. Yesterday though, it was a whole new experience. Mercy went out to a village we had been in contact with. Looking for orphans or children in need. We pretty much already setup our guidelines. Full orphans we will always take, but single parents in desperate situations, we need to talk to and decide. Mercy started with a list of 13 children. She came home last night with 7. She had...

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