India

World Vision is committed to partnering with the people of India to improve their lives today and to help enact sustainable solutions for the future of their children, families, and communities. World Vision’s child sponsorship program plays a vital role in this partnership, with donors from the United States sponsoring more than 65,500 girls and boys. In addition to sponsorship, World Vision operates other programs that benefit communities in India. Highlights include:

• Empowering young women by providing them with financial stability, economic development assistance, and personality development through community projects.
• Involving children in opportunities for self expression like The Child Journalists' workshop by training children to investigate an issue, make short movies, take photos and write articles.
• Ensuring children's health by fully immunizing 86 percent of children in target communities.
• Working to prevent child labor, restore child laborers to their families and school, and advocate for enforcement of existing child labor laws.

World Vision began work in India in 1953. Child sponsorship began in 1960. Since then, some accomplishments include:

• Assisting Indians affected by heavy rains in 1974 with food and shelter.
• Responding to the damage done by Pradesh cyclones and floods during the 1980s by providing agricultural assistance, clean drinking water, immunizations, and nutrition programs.
• Launching several projects during the 1990s to address the concerns of bonded child labor, street children, AIDS awareness, rehabilitation of commercial sex workers, and the prevention of female infanticide.
• Distributing clothes, medicines, kerosene, blankets, food, and more to over 35,000 victims of the December 2004 tsunami.
• Providing cooked food, household items, mosquito nets, cooking utensils, and clothing to thousands of Indians affected by floods in 2009.

Geography and people

Located in South Asia, India is bordered by Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan. The landscape features an upland plateau in the south, an arid desert in the west, and the Himalayan Mountains in the north. Three of India’s largest rivers (the Ganges, Indus, and Brahmaputra) originate in the Himalayas.

The climate ranges from tropical to temperate. Natural resources include arable land, coal, diamonds, limestone, natural gas, titanium ore, and petroleum. India is the world’s seventh largest country.

As the second most populous country in the world, India supports over 15 percent of the world’s people and contains about 200 ethnic groups. Nearly 75 percent of India’s inhabitants are Indo-Aryan, a mixture of indigenous and either European or Iranian ancestry. Over 337 million people speak the national language of Hindi. Indians use English mostly in political and commercial communications.

Although the effects of poverty in India are widespread, girls often suffer the most. Traditionally the father gets first choice of the food, then his sons, with the leftovers going to his wife and daughters. Girls also often miss out on education, immunizations, health care, and other benefits.

Boys may continue to live with their parents after they get married. Girls, however, go to live with their husbands’ families. By law, women cannot wed until they are 21, but in rural communities, families often arrange marriages while the children are quite young.

History

The Hindu culture developed on the subcontinent of India under the Gupta Dynasty in the fifth century A.D. For the next 700 years, Islam slowly spread across the region and blended with Hindu traditions.

By the 1850s, the British controlled most of India and opened trading posts along the western coast. Beginning in 1920, Mohandas K. Gandhi led a mass movement against British rule, using nonviolent resistance to push for independence.

In 1947, the British partitioned the country into two independent states: India (with a Hindu majority) and Pakistan (with a Muslim majority). Since that time, India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir, a northern Muslim region.

India controls two of Kashmir’s three states, while Pakistan controls the remaining state. Both countries supported a cease-fire in 2003, yet several attacks occurred in the past few years, straining relations.

In August 2008, devastating floods in Bihar in eastern India destroyed an estimated 315,000 homes and affected more than 4 million people. In November 2008, terrorists attacked Mumbai, the financial capital of India. The attacks left 200 dead and hundreds injured. In 2009, drought and more floods affected millions of people.

Please pray for:

People struggling with hunger and living with HIV and AIDS to receive the help they need.

The protection and care of vulnerable children, especially for those living on the streets.