Aryan

A boy smiling for the camera.

Aryan’s smile lights up the room as he plays with his friends at Karuna House, but it wasn’t that long ago that he didn’t have much to smile about. His mother deals with untreated schizophrenia and his father is an alcoholic that is not capable of taking care of his children.

“In my family, there was a lot of fighting,” Aryan explains. That led to him and his sister Kiran coming to live at the Tabitha’s Heart children’s home, Karuna House, three years ago. “I like living here because there is good food, good clothes, good friends, shelter and auntie (Rachel).”

Aryan is very intelligent and loves memorizing interesting facts about the world. He came first in his class last year at Karisma Academy and is loved by all his teachers. He’s very excited to be learning how to play the guitar and enjoys swimming lessons.

One of the best things about Aryan, though, has to be his smile. When asked why he smiles even when bad things are happening, he said, “I decided once I should always smile no matter what happens in life. So now I smile every day.” And with that convincing smile, we know he’ll go far; possibly even to the ends of the earth as he wants to be a pilot when he grows up.

Thanks to your support of Tabitha’s Heart, he now has a chance to be whatever he wants to be.

Fariaz

A boy smiling for the camera.

Fariaz’s parents and grandmother are heroin addicts. As a young child, when his father and grandmother were sent to jail for dealing drugs, he and his brother started getting into trouble so his mother sent them to our rehab center for boys. Since then, Fariaz has mostly been under our care.

Fariaz is around 18 years old (we’re not sure of his actual age) and wasn’t able to go far in school due to some serious learning disabilities. He is still very bright and loves to build things, do gardening, catch fish, and fix things around our home. Due to this, we enrolled him into an electrician course. He goes five days a week to classes, and also has computer and English classes at the center. When he finishes, Fariaz will get an official certificate and his school will even help him with job placement. He’s one of six children, and the only one who’s been able to get education and training to help him to have a better life.

Fariaz is super helpful and a little shy and insecure, but loved by all due to his sense of humor and kind heart.

This year we are hoping to enroll more young people like Fariaz into vocational training; especially those who have not had the opportunity or ability to complete their education. Possible areas we are looking at are: catering, hotel front desk staff, air conditioning repair, beauty salon work, etc.

Muskan

A young girl laying on the floor smiling.

At the age of 3, Muskan’s life was incredibly difficult. She was born to a teenage mother addicted to drugs and living on the street. Her father has nothing to do with her and the children living in the area would pass her around and use her for begging daily to get more money from people.

We first met Muskan when she wasn’t quite a year old, being carried around a fair at a park in the middle of the city by another child. We continued to see her in the neighborhood, always playing alone, typically beside an addict that was using. Try as we might, we couldn’t get her out of her tough situation.

Her grandmother saw us on the street and asked us to take Muskan and give her a better life. It took Muskan a few days to adjust to having more than 20 “siblings” giving her attention. But as you can see from this picture, life at the home suited her just fine.

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