LILY YOUTH
You, who are young, are our future and all new creation has to come from you. You are free to choose a greater ideal of humanity than we have at present. In the increasingly globalised world of the future, you will be world citizens and owe allegiance to the whole of humanity, not merely a particular nation, class or culture. And that world includes tragic children like Lily.
Lily was four years old when her mother sold her for £50 to a pimp. The mother, a prostitute, had an alcohol and drug habit to feed. The pimp disappeared with the little girl and, by the time she was tracked down in a Delhi brothel, she had already been raped and abused. She was discovered hidden in a water tank and was blue with cold.
She was rescued, has lived in a shelter ever since, went to school and is now 20 years old, but the trauma she endured still lives deep in her. When asked recently what her life’s ambition was, she replied: ‘To teach mothers to love their children. My mother didn’t love me, otherwise she wouldn’t have sold me.’
It is you who must, with ethics and genius, build a new world, and not just accept the tragedies, greed and injustices of the present order. Instead of being seduced by superficial glamour, seek the heart of existence in universal humanity. Life divorced from compassion, ethics and decency is a source of moral weakness, not strength.
Albert Einstein said: ‘Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.’
There are an estimated 2 million children in brothels in India alone. They are let down by the very adults who should protect them. They have no healthcare, proper food, holidays or love and affection – not even a smile. They are just commodities and everybody is making money from those little bodies. Nobody cares whether they live or die. It is we who have made them invisible, and it is up to us to give them hope. We need to raise funds to give them secure homes, education, food, clothes, employment - everything that we take for granted.
Help us to create a future for them.
Lady Mohini Kent Noon
Lily was four years old when her mother sold her for £50 to a pimp. The mother, a prostitute, had an alcohol and drug habit to feed. The pimp disappeared with the little girl and, by the time she was tracked down in a Delhi brothel, she had already been raped and abused. She was discovered hidden in a water tank and was blue with cold.
She was rescued, has lived in a shelter ever since, went to school and is now 20 years old, but the trauma she endured still lives deep in her. When asked recently what her life’s ambition was, she replied: ‘To teach mothers to love their children. My mother didn’t love me, otherwise she wouldn’t have sold me.’
It is you who must, with ethics and genius, build a new world, and not just accept the tragedies, greed and injustices of the present order. Instead of being seduced by superficial glamour, seek the heart of existence in universal humanity. Life divorced from compassion, ethics and decency is a source of moral weakness, not strength.
Albert Einstein said: ‘Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.’
There are an estimated 2 million children in brothels in India alone. They are let down by the very adults who should protect them. They have no healthcare, proper food, holidays or love and affection – not even a smile. They are just commodities and everybody is making money from those little bodies. Nobody cares whether they live or die. It is we who have made them invisible, and it is up to us to give them hope. We need to raise funds to give them secure homes, education, food, clothes, employment - everything that we take for granted.
Help us to create a future for them.
Lady Mohini Kent Noon