People say that our children are our shining hope for the future. A couple of weeks ago, while visiting India, I met about 100 of those bright hopes in a rural Maharashtra village school—all in their crisp school uniforms, the girls with matching ribbons in their plaited hair and the boys with their hair slicked down with coconut oil.
Teachers there don’t have to consider carrying guns to protect themselves, as the children are unfailingly polite. If “Miss” raises her voice, all the children snap to attention. On the day of my visit, the children were receiving one of their regular Compassionate Citizen lessons from an Animal Rahat staffer. Compassionate Citizen is a wonderful humane-education program, which has been used by more than 21,000 private and government schools, reaching nearly 4.3 million children across the country. The students participated in various activities, including telling short stories and drawing pictures to illustrate lessons about the humane treatment of animals.
Standing under a beautiful poster of children and animals dancing in a circle around the world, the instructor asked them, “What can you do to stop cruelty to animals?” And the replies illustrated exactly what Animal Rahat does every day: “I can ask someone to give a bullock shade from the sun,” “I can feed stray dogs,” “I can stop someone from beating their buffaloes with a stick,” and so on.
At the end of the class, the students were rewarded with candy and colored pencils, and they all stood together and recited a pledge to keep an eye out for suffering animals—something they don’t have to look far to find, I’m afraid. In the same village, as we were leaving, we found a very thin puppy and a dog with mange covering his whole body. We treated them and transported them to Animal Rahat’s sanctuary, and we also removed inhumane wooden hobbles from the legs of some passing buffaloes.
What You Can Do
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