Bangalore, August 12: Raksha Bandhan the festival that celebrates the sublime love between siblings, got a new dimension this year, when the children of the ‘Narendra Nele’ street children project at Leggere in Penya visited the Government run Rehabilitation-Center-for-Beggars at Sumanahalli, popularly known as ‘beggars colony’ and tied ‘rakhis’ to the inmates.

NARENDRA NELE’S Street children connect to the beggars through rakhis. The Nele street children project run by the Hindu Seva Pratishthan has 9 shelter homes across Bangalore which house 270 children most of whom were earlier into begging and rag-picking. The project provides them with shelter, food, medical amenities and counseling and has enrolled them into nearby Government schools.

Holeyappa, who studies in the fifth standard, addressed the four hundred odd adults inmates of the ‘beggars-colony’ said “We have come to tie you Rakhis as we all are brothers and sisters”.

“Many of the children themselves were into begging earlier and they know the difficult circumstances the beggars are in.” says Prakash who volunteers at Narendra Nele. ‘As these children are growing up and living transformed lives it is important they connect back to the society” he adds.

“While we want the children to excel in their own lives and become self reliant, we also want them to imbibe the habit of service and compassion for others and become socially responsible citizens” says Krishnamurthy, the coordinator of the Nele project. “That is why we decided to take the children to the Beggars-Colony and spend time with the inmates there.”

“If the beneficiaries of social service projects themselves can become contributors to the change that they have benefited from, it can have a cascading effect on the society” he adds.