BTS 8: About Joe...

I feel really lucky that I've been able to spend so much time with Joe over the last couple of weeks. The more of his stories I've heard and the more of his book I've read, the more my admiration and affection for him has grown!

It's incredible that he has been able to do so much, with so little. He started out with just £200 and a lot of goodwill from local people, one of whom gave him an acre of wasteland to use rent-free. 

In the beginning there were five boys, including Subby, who was then the 15-year old leader of a gang of pickpockets, working and sleeping rough on Madurai railway station. When I met Subby I asked him what life was like before Joe and he looked at me like I was mad. "It was no life", he answered. 

The boys baked bricks from mud and built a poultry hut where they began to farm chickens. As word spread, more and more destitute boys arrived looking for help and of course Joe took them in. 

Chickens are still a common sight in every Boys Town!

As the project grew they were given a grant from Oxfam which allowed them to buy a further 20 acres of land for arable farming, expansion of the poultry unit, and creation of a dairy unit for milking buffaloes. On this new plot of land they also built a series of small buildings which became a farm training school (today this is Tirumangalam Boys Town). The initial set-up was that the boys would live and train on the farm for three years, at the end of which they'd be given a pair of oxen, cart and plough, two milking buffaloes or a flock of sheep and a ram… to allow them to return home to their villages with farm training and a second income. 

Every year Joe would return to the UK for a couple of months to fund-raise. Over time this allowed them to develop more and more Boys Towns, as well as one Girls Town and three Children's Villages for the younger ones. He also set up Boys Towns in Sri Lanka and Thailand. Many of these new residential projects were developed by Subby, who went on to work for the charity for many years and is still one of the major fundraisers today. 

The Girls Town story really moved me: Joe started it up in 1981 (the year I was born); until this point only middle-upper class girls in towns and cities were able to go to school! Setting up the Girls Town allowed young girls to live close to a good school and receive the support and encouragement they needed to get an education.

Girls Town Girls... in their school uniforms!

One of the really amazing things is that Joe's work didn't just stop with these Boys and Girls Towns. Over the years he has undertaken countless other initiatives to help develop poor rural communities in Tamil Nadu. 

One of his most important projects focused on child labour prevention. Many families sent their young children to work as they simply couldn't do without that income. Joe set up a scheme to pay the families the amount of the child's income (usually 300 rupees = £3.50 per month!) on the condition that they let their child go through five years of secondary education. If they committed he gave them a hybrid jersey calf after one year, and another after the second year. At the end of the five years the family income had doubled AND their child was educated and able to get skilled work at a much higher rate of pay. Such a simple idea and yet so powerful.

He also ran a "Plant a Million Trees" project which incentivised farmers to regenerate wasteland areas in Tamil Nadu, "Rural Development Programmes", which provided basic healthcare, education incentives and employment training for small villages and "People in Need" which offered simple finance for medical/ education employment needs e.g. buying a set of tools for a carpenter, or a cow for a poor family. 

When the Boys and Girls Towns sat empty during the school day or during the holidays, they were used for "Boys Town Crafts" training programmes where local villagers were taught embroidery, tie-dye or carpentry. The end products were then sold in the UK to raise funds for the charity. In the 1970's the Boys Towns were also used for eye camps where free eye checks, treatments and cataract surgery were provided to poor villagers.

Nowadays, one of the big side-projects is an initiative called "Education for Life". This provides some of the Boys Town programmes (e.g organised sports and games, crafts, tuition, weekend outings) to poor children still living at home in local villages. It seems like this will be the way of the future. Admissions at the Boys Towns are gradually declining. Since education became compulsory (in 2001!!), the government has invested heavily in building new schools and in setting up free hostels for poor village children. You rarely see homeless children on the streets now and you also don't see children working. So there's less of a need for residential projects but still a need to offer other activities which go beyond what is offered in school, to develop the other skills and interests which make them into more well-rounded individuals. 

All smiles at Tirumangalam Boys Town

Joe has given his whole life to this. As much as these projects moves me, I know that's something I'm far too selfish to do. They estimate that 10,000 children have been through the Boys and Girls Towns, but clearly tens of thousands more have been helped by the other projects. And what really hit me this week, is that they're not just changing a child's life: they're changing the outlook for future generations of that family. These children will be able to get well-paid jobs and THEIR children will be brought up above the poverty line. To say this is life-changing seems almost an understatement.

So please over dinner tonight, raise a glass to Joe Homan, who has dedicated his life to this and never asked for any thanks. A truly amazing man!

My hero!