Like most bankers his age, Anuj Chaudhry has a lot to think about each day. Balancing the books. Checking on delinquent loans. Finishing his homework.
Well, okay, so the world doesn't have a lot of 13-year-old bankers. The number of orphaned, street-dwelling, rag-picking youths who run cooperative banks for homeless children must be even smaller.
But Anuj and the 160 members of the Bal Vikas Bank, or Child Development Bank, say children who live on the street should have more opportunities to take charge of their finances and help each other escape the cycle of poverty. If they wait for adults to provide for them, they say, they'll wait forever.
"They are saving their money and proving their worth," says the gangly Anuj in the bank's headquarters, a five- by-seven-foot wood-and-metal cubicle in a corner of the Fatehpuri Night Shelter in Old Delhi. "Now they have hope for the future." [continue]
From an article at csmonitor.com, Delhi street kids bank on each other.
Posted on December 3, 2002 06:30 AM. Filed under: miscellaneous.