Source: Irish Times
WHEN EDITH Wilkins was handed the keys of her new council home, with its spectacular views across the bay of Crosshaven in her native Co Cork last week, she was over the moon, describing herself and her two adopted children as “so incredibly lucky”. Friends have suggested it may be “karma”; Wilkins spent almost 30 years working tirelessly to put a roof over the heads of thousands of street children in India.Wilkins (55) first went to Calcutta as a young nurse to work with Irish NGO, Goal for three months. However, that three months became three decades once she met the street children who were to change the course of her life.
In the early months, despite threats from pimps, she lived on the streets with children as young as three who were being abused and trafficked. There were plenty of homes and orphanages in the teeming city, but they refused to admit children suffering from sexually transmitted diseases as a result of the horrific abuse inflicted upon them.
“The children were told, ‘come back when you’re better’. I slept with them on the floor of a school run by Sr Cyril Rooney until we opened our first halfway house, Amadir Bari, in 1984. Things just grew and grew from there,” says Wilkins.
Since then, she has helped change the lives of thousands of Indian street children. She has been responsible for initiating the building of maternity hospitals in remote areas. She has set up many residential homes, drop-in centres, night shelters, sick bays and awareness community programmes in the slums, on the streets and in red-light areas of Calcutta. During her time in Calcutta, Wilkins worked closely with Mother Teresa.
Almost 10 years ago, she shifted her focus to the North of Bengal and the border areas to try to stem the flow of children – many as young as three or four years old – being trafficked from Nepal, mostly for prostitution, slave labour or to smuggle drugs and other goods into the country. Wilkins says the situation was not being addressed by any other NGO in the area, so she set up the Edith Wilkins Street Children Foundation.
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