Gerard Vandervegt is the founder of Good Shepherd Homes, a charity that rescues children from the streets of India and places them in a home. For 22 years, Good Shepherd Homes has provided secure and safe home environments, quality education, and career opportunities for street children. GSH not only takes children off the street, but the charity helps children to start working towards their own future.

Today, the GSH operation starts a brand new chapter with the opening of the Parandwadi Children's Village. The centre will not only provide housing and care for hundreds of children but will also function as a full-time school, vocational training, and educational hub.

I had the privilege of meeting Gerard in the early 2000s here in Australia and have since traveled and visited the work several times. Located a few hours outside of Mumbai, India, I've had the privilege of seeing firsthand the incredible impact they are having in bringing children off of the streets and literally transforming their lives.

Gerard shares some incredible stories of how it all began and the inspiring young kids that have gone on to lead remarkable lives and achieve the career of their dreams. I'm so thankful for Gerard's incredible perseverance over the years leading this work — it is certainly no easy task and as we delve in and talk about some of the real challenges in this whole area of homeless street children in places like India and around the world.

I think your eyes will be opened to the inner workings of how this terrible injustice exists in our world, but you will also discover the hope and path forward bringing systemic change and hope to these children's lives.

To support this incredible work our to learn how you can get involved with Good Shepherd Homes visit their website GoodShepherdHomes.org. You can also follow them on Instagram & Facebook.

Learn more about Justice Matters — justicematters.tv

Support the show — patreon.com/justicematters

Gerard Vandervegt  

Also by the way when we say street children in india it's not street children as understood in the western world they're not kids that spend a lot of time on the road these kids sleep on the street on the pavement every single night they wake up there they cook if they cook their date eat there they work 24/7 without interruption on the street. So there's no baths unless you swim in the sea if you're in a city like Bombay you just go to the sea jump in and get out. So that's life.

 

Tim Buxton 

Welcome to Justice Matters the podcast inspiring a world where everyone belongs. I'm your host Tim Buxton

 

Tim Buxton 

Today we have on the show the founder of the charity that serves street children in india called Good Shepherd Homes his name is Gerard and i had the privilege of meeting Gerard in the early 2000s here in australia and then i went and visited their work several times just outside of mumbai india in a place called tele gao and had the privilege of visiting their work seeing the incredible impact they'll have bringing children off of the streets putting them in a home giving them an education transforming their lives. Gerard like i said has been a good friend he was one of my groomsmen and it's such a privilege to be able to share this catch up that i had with him just yesterday we recorded this podcast and i'm just so so thankful for jarrods incredible perseverance over the years leading this work it is certainly no easy task and as we delve in and talk about some of the real challenges in this whole area of of homeless children street children in places like india but really all around the world i think you'll kind of eyes will be opened up to the the inner workings of of how this this terrible injustice exists in our society but also the incredible path forward and how to actually bring bring systemic change and hope to these children's lives i hope you enjoy this interview that i have with Gerard, here it is.

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

I went over in the mid 90s and me and some friends we started an agency charity to give kids the chance to get off the street there are many good organizations that work with children on the street to providing educational tools providing blankets and you know a few survival skills but my feeling has been over years that if a child remains on the street they're still going to be drug addicted at the end of the day they're still going to be infected with various viruses and they're dead what they're still feasible future you're not going to get a job you know you're not going to get any kind of security in the long run so the best and some people can test that but i feel very much the best way used into some kind of a house environment home environment and into an education that is sort of a regular the regular drag like most of us been through right school we call it school

 

Tim Buxton 

Well i love i love you've kind of brought up a couple of key points and what you do and maybe we can delve into those in more detail later on the whole importance of of education of having a home and being cared for in a home environment what what i would love to kind of tease out from you is really how it began i mean you i remember meeting you for the first time you picked me up you picked us up in actually i met you first in australia and then i've got the privilege of going to india to see your work and you picked us up in mumbai airport took us on that rickety winding drive in the middle of the night up to Pune and i think your your place at the time was in Telagao a bit bit outside of pune are there other countries so but you did that same journey yourself just by yourself you went to india and you had a few rupees in your pocket and who would have that today you'd have multi complex of homes and a school and incredible staff running an organization, you should, you should be really proud of.

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

It's been a long time coming. It's been a long time coming. So I went over just because I had an interest. And so I sat out, bought a plane ticket. It's as simple as that. And I had yet a couple of 100 quid on me and boom, you're in India. At that point in the 90s, it was really a different world. Today. I think India is cleaned up a little bit. You know, the the odd thing. I don't know whether you know this, but when Slumdog Millionaire came out, the it was a huge hit. And it was an Oscar winner, but for the Indian government, it was bad news. They took it to be bad news. They took it to be a national embarrassment, right. And so they started this huge cleanup operation, getting sleep get these kids off the street. So now kids are being routed up much more regularly by police forces by even the people that are working with the police, plainclothes cops, and they get put into remand homes. I don't think that in your time in India, you went past a remand homes...

 

Tim Buxton 

I No don't remember

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

The remand homes, they're essentially youth prisons. Right. So these young kids 7,8,5,6, 9,10... whatever age that they get picked up. They get put into one of those and it's rough, very terrible, terrible place. I've been in them and they are Dickensian conditions. Wow. You know, I still still still goes on, unfortunately. 

 

Tim Buxton 

Yeah. So when when you came back things were a lot different in the 90s. You. Yeah. You saw quite a, I can imagine there was quite a lot. Like you mentioned of street children. And everywhere. What what impacted you the most what kind of made you think, well, this is something that I can do something about I need to do something about this.

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

Yeah, yeah. Well, whether you go out on Main Street, or whether you're, for instance, in train station, wherever you find yourself to kids are there and they'll be pulling maybe on your trouser legs. It can tap you on the back and try and get your attention. Did you? Did you experience any of that when you were in India?

 

Tim Buxton 

Oh, sure. I mean, almost, they are masters of getting into your weaseling their way into your car window onto your wherever it is that you might be? Yeah, into your space. Some of them quite cute too. They use every trick in the book every job?

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

No, that's that's what they live on the right is their width, their charm, their their skills. It's even a kid of 8, 7, 8 can pick up a mouthful of English and manage, you know. But what I found is that it's relatively easy to start to make a difference. It's not so hard to give a child a chance. What we had to do as a brand new organization was a couple of things in order to start making a tangible difference. Number one, we had to get ourselves organized, registered. Number two, we had to go and find children where they were that were willing to leave the road, start in school and enter into their own journey toward toward a bit of a life. So finding kids was not hard. The kids they are like I said everywhere. Third thing was that obviously street kids don't have birth certificates. Okay. They don't have paperwork. They've got one pair of pants, they've got one t shirt. You know Ready to go this state fair fair that they're working to live in. Also, by the way, when we say street children in India, it's not street children, as understood in the Western world, they're not kids that spend a lot of time on the road. These kids sleep on the street on the pavement, every single night. They wake up there, they cook, if they cook there, they eat there, they work 24 seven, without interruption on the street. So there's no bats, unless you swim in the sea. If you're in a city like Bombay, you just go to the seat, jump in and get out. So that's life. And we got to know as it as a team, very quickly, we got to know a number of them, got to know 1015 kids. And many of those children, they really do not want to be there. They're there because they've run away from domestic violence. They've escaped danger. Families have fallen apart. drug related situations, parents are either on brown sugar, which is sort of a corrupted form of heroin, or they're alcohol addicted. They've maybe come from Bihar, within 24 hours, they're on vt station, they're sleeping in the station with all of the kids by their side. But three weeks down the road, maybe the parents have found a slum dwelling in a slum dwelling is like a corrugated are in check. It's 15 square foot, and the kids are there with them. There's one big bed. But what happens once a month later, as tensions rise, and despair, kicks up, gets scattered because Donald eating, there is no life to be lived. And so that's how children turn industry kids. And they end up like I said, on the road without a birth certificate. So they don't even have a means if they wanted to get into the school system, they can't get admitted. You need a school bag one, you need a school uniform two, you need a piece of paper, you don't have any of those things, right. So how would I go to get from A to B? what we had to do, and in those that that's not even valid anymore. But in those days, what we did was we would go into their local hospital and a government hospital. And you go into the government hospital with the child. And the one of the consultants one of the doctors will look the kid in the teeth. And they'll say well, she is definitely seven. Wow, no doubt, you know, either seven or eight, but we're gonna say seven.

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

What date is the child born? Well, do you have any preference. So you pick a date, arbitrarily. And five minutes later, you've got a birth certificate, backdated birth certificate this child was born and for most likely you're within a year of the actual birthday. So we did that for all of those children. And lo and behold, they've got everything that they need to then start their their legal citizen journey reaction into society. Yeah, that's it, you know, they're in there. All of a sudden, they're they're in society, not in their head. But physically they are right. On paper. So many times example, we would be with kids in the, in the local train, going maybe to the zoo or going into, you know, some going to see a movie or something like that. You get into the local train local trains are packed in India, you've got people from people just flock to trains because they're cheap, and they're fast. Yeah, roads are congested. So trains are the solution. And our kids invariably would just squat on the ground, in the dirt, because they have learned from infancy that that is your place. And without question, if somebody will come in, especially if they're sitting down somewhere, they will immediately just go down, sit on the ground, and they wouldn't even be aware. So didn't even see that. You know, and we have the ability or the privilege to communicate with a child that they are now A citizen of this country and they have every right to sit on a chair, or to sit on a bench. It's like a revelation to an eight or nine year old, they didn't think that they would ever get there in their whole lifetime. So the caste system, quote, unquote, has been cancelled, but the social ramifications are there. Just like a chicken, who's whose head has been caught off, right, that chicken, who will skinned if you can still run for a month, some chickens have been known to live for days without a head. And the caste system has lived without a head, a legal head for decades now. So is it still goes on now? Today? 

 

Tim Buxton 

Now, you know, I remember when I was first there, and yeah, the children knocking on your door or window at a traffic light. You mentioned on the trains, you know, there would be be dozens and dozens of street kids just walking up and down the trains, you know, begging... it, it was everywhere, at least when I was there. And of course, you referred to the the attempt to try and minimize this. apparent, you know, blight on society on Indian society. You alluded to the caste system, is there a reason? Can we go? why it's such an issue in particularly in India. I mean, this isn't there's a lot of other poor, less developed countries that don't have this issue and very populous countries as well. Is there something within that systemically a part of of that culture that gives? gave rise to it? 

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

Sure. Sure. I think one of the main problems is, you know, you find street children in these mega cities. Bombay is 22 million people. Fine. Delhi is 2018 19 million people. Poor now, when I came to it was three and a half. But that's 20 years ago. And today it's 7 million, 7 million people in Erie and you know, Puna Yeah, that's a regional town. Okay. But it's now become the size of London. Bombay, like the population of Bombay fits in to 1/3 of the geographical area that London occupies. So you have 10 times the population concentration of London. And you can tell there's no space there's absolutely no space. So when people when families arrive, there are no houses for them to file into. There are slum dwellings but they very often have to be physically build, you have to build you have to compile your slum before you move into it. But so that we could get our wall somehow attach it get a piece of plastic, you know, put that over your head, have a pan have a burner have a mat, there's your house. So it's completely unsustainable, the played these cities are bursting at the seams. So take that situation for one. Secondly, you have this idea in many of the rural areas and still today, half 40% of India lives in in the countryside. Yeah. And many of these people I cannot read in cannot write they are they're illiterate. Farmers they might be able to read a couple of words, but not they're not conversant with, with with any written content. So the idea is when we go to Bangalore, when we go to hide but the money is there, look at Bollywood dinner, look at the stars that the streets might Not be paved with gold, but they're going to be paved with something more than what we've got over here. Right. So there is that is an incredible sense of promise and potential. So families bundle up, get on the train, they take what they've got, we go to the city, they end up there. And they find out, they got there that morning with 2000 other people. I'm not exaggerating, hello, there, their day also got off the train with nowhere to go. So it doesn't take very long for people to start losing hope. And now add to that, issues of than alcoholism, substance abuse. For the younger generation. It's solvents and glue that they get very quickly hooked on because there's dealers on the street that are very proactive and try to hook kids and drugs are cheap, but they're expensive for them. The drugs might only be seven rupees, that might be like cents, you know, pennies. But within a couple of weeks, the kids are hooked. Parents are hooked on something because they're depressed. And they they're fighting and blaming each other. Right. And so this sort of domestic despair plays out over and over and over again. The other thing is that now it's not so much now, but HIV was a huge issue. Yeah. And so then you've got a generation of parents that are dying with these viruses with these adjacent conditions. Or it's other it's it's other things like typhoid, or TB, or, you know, whatever, cholera. And so then, kids get orphaned, they just end up orphan dirt if there's one parent that cannot cope. And hello, next week, the child is on the road, there is their typical mystery child.

 

Tim Buxton 

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Tim Buxton 

And, and it seems like that, that street child street kid industry is a very well oiled machine these days that they can suddenly quickly and swiftly get caught up into what I'm hearing is this sense of what one just overpopulation population density. Just Just poverty in general. And that could be from the remnants of a caste system that you're referring to that kind of almost legitimizes poverty and says it's a, you know, this is your place. And, and yes, and so you've got overwhelming poverty, especially in rural places, and in in a in equal distribution of wealth over populations, and, you know, highly vulnerable family dynamics that then fit into this system that exists. And so, is that is that somewhat a summation? Absolutely. Absolutely. What you're saying and So, given that, that is the case and India today has developed in as an economy it's, there's there has been growth in many respects. I mean, I remember the first time I went there, there Mumbai, were you know, there were buildings going up the second time it was like barely recognizable. It was like, Yeah, like, whole new, like cities within cities were had had had been built. And that was that was back in. Gosh, 2010. Eight? I don't know.

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

Yeah. Even before that. I think it's 2005 maybe six, that you were last something like that. I can't remember when you realize there but 15 years ago. I'm talking about now. Yeah. Oh, you look at Shanghai, Shenzhen, Shanghai, all these places. Yeah, you know, these these Asian mega cities. Fiberglass right upon fiberglass steel. You see that? Sort of prefab city. Yeah. Rising up out of nowhere on top of the crumbling old Mumbai, right. So there's two cities in one. Wow. And the old cities still prevailing, and the new cities full of desks and offices. And the other city is by and large where people are and and people also live in Iraq. You know, the day even the residential blocks are going 30 floors 35 floors high. Wow. And so many of the slum dwellers now get rehoused into cheaper versions of these residential communities. Much of Mumbai now lives in gated communities with your watchmen and you know, with the padlocks and everything like that and 

 

Tim Buxton 

So still segregated in so many ways.

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

Oh, totally, totally segregated. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, they've built they built the economy versions what they will project and block Yeah, right. For the American viewers. And and so what happens a lot is that slum dwellers then get number one, their, whatever they live in, gets razed to the ground. So your house is gone. And I've been there when it happens. So you've got a bulldozer in the street. They are going from one end to the other, and they're just, they're rousing. They're raising, flattening the whole place. And very often there's a commercial aspect and there's a residential aspect of Islam. People are selling stuff. People are doing a little barbershop the whole thing's got down. Those that family then they Start to rebuild that slum. They take it very stoically. And when it happens, they start to rebuild that slum from the minute that it's down even before the cops leave the premises. Cadbury, whatever has been cast off the report by the evening, most likely that's in some form or other is standing again. Right? So people get they get pointed to kind of a concrete box, this is now your house, we build this for you. And so they will rent that out to someone slum dwellers that now that de facto, then they know that they will still live in the slum. But they'll rent out the space that they should live in to somebody else for additional income. Right? Yeah. So the slums are still there. Up to recently 42 or so percent of Bombay residents were living in slums. So you're talking about a significant portion,

 

Tim Buxton 

Almost a half of the population. Now, so however you slice and dice that, whether they're there, they do choose to move into their new concrete, slum box or not. You you're dedicated. And your team is dedicated to you're going after for one of a better phrase going after those that are at the very bottom of that scrapheap that have little to no hope. And I want to talk about your approach in this because there's a lot of like you said, there's a lot of organizations doing a lot of good things. But you've kind of like in this specific approach. One, you you took an approach to put them in houses and give them house parents, which I think is yes, a lot different to, you know, a big center with where it's, you know, as a traditional orphanage approach. Secondly, secondly, you prioritized education, and you've now even got your own school that you're educated fairly, you know, you're able to have even more impact and input into their lives than just the time that they are home. So can you talk about maybe those two areas? Because, you know, there's obviously probably even so many other things that you're doing? Sure is helpful. And why?

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

Well, when I went out there, I obviously did my homework. So I just started to was no bright idea on my part. I started to liaise with different organizations that have been out there for a number of years, they're doing this, you know, coming and going. And so it with children's homes, dormitories don't really work. The reason, of course, that they don't work is that kids get forgotten they can. There is always a PAC, man mentality when children get in large groups, so you want to keep those groups as small as possible. We would love to have units of seven children, we don't we have units of 1012 kids. But if you if if even that the staff child ratio goes up more it for for an organization like ours, it becomes untenable, unsustainable. But hey, we've been able, we've got so we got two staff members for a group of 1011 kids. They live like a family like a normal, basic, the mom and dad and kids as much as possible. And our staff don't work in shifts. They live with the kids, like any set of parents lives with their kids. Sometimes house parents have had their own children on top, so maybe they've got one or two kids. And they've got their group of either boys or girls you can't have mixed in India, it has to be one gender around. Okay. That's a long story in itself but So, you want to preserve an intimacy and in an environment where every child is noticed every child is important. And as you said, the other thing is, schools. Now, when we first started, we just placed our kids in different schools, some already for English. Now what they call an angry India, English medium school, and others were in Hindi schools. A couple of years ago, we started around school. And so those the kids that we admit, we can tailor our education to their specific needs. And every child comes in with their own story. Some have some have ever have issues, because they've got, you know, X amount of trauma on the back burner, puttering away. Yeah, I mean, remember, our lives line with some kids, they take two, three years before their directive mind really kicks in. So, you know, many times you've got to work with them. Extra tuition, maybe a little bit of therapy. It's different with every child. Yeah.

 

Tim Buxton 

I remember when we're talking actually the other night. And we were. Yeah, just thinking about, you know, what, what, what we could really address in this specific episode, and what came came up for me, as we talked was this idea of, you've got a child that at as early as three years of age, how they operate, their operating system is survival. And they have learnt how to get by in a very hostile environment. And when even even with a loving family, a supportive environment around them, it's gonna take a lot of time for that programming, and that Modus of operating to change, for them to get to a place where they're able to even learn in school to even think that yes, that there is anything beyond you know, how do I just make it through this day? What do I need to do? Yeah, and so yeah, I can only imagine the, the need for patience and such a, you know? Yeah. commitment. Well, to walking through with that child. Can you, can you think of a story? So that comes to mind maybe? That, yeah, brings that maybe? Truth home. Yeah. Thi impact of...

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, what living with rejection is rough. It's really hard in children invariably internalize discrimination that they encounter, to mean that their value is somehow less they don't, they may not verbalize that internally. But that is the message that they decode from what they hear and see. You're nothing, you're in the way. And that's the that's, that's the message that's constantly reinforced. There was one time when, in the beginning, right in the beginning, when I walked into a shop, in punch out right in the heart, in the bowels of old Puna. And it was a bread shop. I was waiting in line. And it seemed like the line wasn't very long, but I was waiting in line for like a long time. And when it was my turn and somebody else was cold up in front of me, and then like, I got it, you know, you're white, you're English. We're sending you a message that you can wait. And somebody you know, because there is resentment there. There is whatever the event I never I never had a conversation with that shopkeeper. But even for myself in my position, and this was so trivial. It was completely it was unimportant. I get served three, four minutes later than the otherwise I would have. Is that going to affect my life? Is it going to affect my day? No. But it affected me inside. I was I was in some way I was, I was offended that I was bearing, you know, the cost for what another generation had done. Now I am experiencing that as an adult being unfamiliar with, but children that that are growing up with rejection every single day. To them, it's fully internalized. So by the time that child is 678, they feel that they've got it coming. They feel that they are deserving. They feel that they are what they've heard that they are. Right. So I was once in Bombay, going up, going, going down the stairs in the station in what is where Bandra station, okay, I'm going down the stairs, and there was a boy sitting there, he was about seven years of age, he was a Peggotty, which sitting on the stairs, and I stopped, now wanted to give him a five rupee coin. And a guy, a just a commuter, came up from below, came up from the other direction, walking up the stairs and stopped me. And he said to me, I know it sounds harsh. Maybe you won't believe what he thought on the tourist. I got there last week. I've been there for 10 years. So he said, You're not going to believe maybe what I'm saying. But he's a professional. That's a professional beggar That boy is right. So it even the citizens of the big cities are victims in that sense, because a message has been reinforced to them that this situation is systemic. This is a permanent, this is a blight, for lack of a better word on society, street children have always been there, they will always be there. I once another example. I once saw a girl she could not have been definitely could not have been more than maybe four or five years of age. And she was sitting outside of the exit of Victoria terminus station, that's that large elephant time, like Kings Cross Station in South Bombay. And she was sitting there by yourself in a little in a little red dress, right? Little girl sitting begging, and she is doing that every day. Now, I only noticed because we were making, at that point, a documentary on a few kids that that we were about to take into the home, but not one person would stop and ask her. Why are you here? What are you doing? What's your situation? They're not the people that don't stop are not bad people. Yeah. You know, their standard of hospitality is on a much higher level than my standard was growing up in Ireland. These are people that are fully functional, compassionate. They're givers. They are they they live for, for for their friends and their family and for their community. They are responsible citizens. But a street child is a street child, right? And so these things have kind of they have big palm. So they've become so customized, that they now have become by and large, not completely not by everyone. But by the majority. They're unchallenged. Yeah. And so it these conditions they perpetuate. Yeah. from generation to generation, a 15 year old now is used to seeing all bunch of kids on the street. And it's not even question because they've always been there. So they were there in 1895

 

Tim Buxton 

Anything so so I would say any systemic any systemic issue or problem within any society, those that are in it will rarely notice that it's actually an issue. It's because it's so familiar and so part of everyday life now. I would love I'd love for you to kind of follow some of those examples out with maybe a story of one of the kids you've brought in and and the transformation and change that that you saw. And I think people want to want to know that. There's still hope and it's still worth being, you know, putting yourself out there you know committing to to to this kind of work i'd love for you to share maybe one of the stories of your own kids

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

I would love to.  Right at the start when we began the first home we to the members of we admitted 344 kids from the same family the mother had died in a truck accident the father was an alcoholic and there was just no way for the kids to get to to get their needs met basically now we've never been in the habit of pulling families apart or the habit in the practice if there is a way for the natural mother or the natural father to make the situation work then by all means that has to be the solution right it's only when there really is no other way but the kids they come in this particular family they came in and they're the oldest boy i'm going to call him santosh that's not his real name, okay. So Santosh he joined in 1996 and there was one night this was not my cell but this was one of my colleagues one night binu was doing the rounds in the in the bedrooms and was looking around seeing if all the kids are okay and so suddenly this boy woke up and he sat up in bed with an open night with an open knife in his hand right and eyes wide knife drawn this is just in your this is just in the bedroom oh my so he just asked santosh what's what's going on what's the matter and the boy said die by and nothing i just woke up not a problem so as we dug a little deeper in this situation we found out that he slept with a knife every single night under his pillow and when we started to ask why he slept with a knife under his pillow it was because he just it they had talked together and had decided that they should stay on guard because you just never know what's going to happen wow when they will for somebody had come to drag one of their friends of ignite their blankets got stolen one of the kids got beaten up by a cop in the middle of the night so you're always armed and you're always ready even when you go to a facility like ours and you're living in a normal neighborhood with in a domestic situation and you're going to school you've got your school bag you've got your uniform you've got your teacher and everything's been stable for like two years right those kids were still in the frame of mind where they thought you know what if we're going to get traded off what if we going to get trafficked and put on a boat what are we going to end up in a jute bag at night and we're going to be carted off to the harbor and put in a ship and we get sold in england this child slaves those were the ideas that some of their friends on the street had fed them and so that all of that insecurity was still get out puttering away in the background but you know what with patience and with consistency yeah dad dad dad guy today he's got two children he is an overseer and his business he's become a success and we have stories in that way of i don't know this more than i can count you know we want one of our kids went to hydrabad and went through nursing school and then became a nursing overseer in their hospital online Another one became a user interface designer and finally got into an international Banking Corporation and is now in the design of the banking interfaces that we are facing on our computers. And when we do our online banking, amazing, um, you know, another kid, when in his become came from the north of India, both parents died with HIV sibling died with HIV. And today he's a medical doctor in Puna. And I go, I got a qualifications about three years back, it's been operating as a GP. So yeah, even you know, this is, this is the house, even though many of the prejudices are still in place. And none of us, by the way, are exempt from prejudices. We just have blind spots. Yeah, exactly. And it is possible for children to climb the ladder, walk the road progress. Because in, in today's India, skills are valued, work ethic is valued, even above, maybe your physical background, right, or where you come from, or where you don't come from. And so it that's been an enormously encouraging thing to see that you can hop on, quote, unquote, this system and make make a success of yourself. In 21st century India, it's, it's the best, it's the best news ever. 

 

Tim Buxton 

Yeah, I was gonna kind of finish off by asking you what is your hope. And I think you just summed it up. This is the hope that if you can provide these children, these precious children, and if you want to see them with dignity, and you see the potential that they they have, and not see them as what they are, and what they are viewed by society, because what they are is beautiful souls with potential if you can provide a loving home. And if you can give them an opportunity to discover their gifts, their skills, to get an education, then anything, anything is possible. And that's what you're doing. And it's worth it when you tell those stories, and countless more, is that countless more that we simply just don't have time for. I mean, that is what is so inspiring about your work. And I will say what is inspiring to me personally, Jared, I've known you for a long time. Yeah, how long? I had let's do that. Now. It's almost a year. Yeah. So I've known you for that long ago. You were one of my groomsmen at my wedding. Your faithfulness? Yeah. You spend you split your time between India and overseeing the work on the ground and traveling all around Europe and elsewhere just to ensure that this work and continue to that there's food on the table for these kids, that their salaries for the staff that there's there's a home for these children to live in and a school for them to go to Jared, thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for for not giving up on them. And I know you would easily deflect that. Yeah, but yeah, a lot of time, a lot of time and consistency to see this. 

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

It's a privilege. And of course, it feels like when you start somewhere like this, it feels like you're giving up. But then you find out that you're taken up to to have a front seat in the in the play of human transformation. And to see a person's health come around if physical health come around, and to see their confidence emerge. Once you get to know people. It's a matter of discovery that their life is as large as intense, as valuable as your own. But it sounds like a no brainer, but these sometimes are the things that we don't actually add up. So when there is relationship, there is that discovery that yet he, there is a potential of a life larger than my own. So when you then are in a position to give a person, and I don't say a child, but a person, there is an adult hiding in there, right? You give a person the tools to work toward their own life and to build their future. You multiply your life, yeah, you've doubled your life. Let's say that you reach three children, you reach five children, you reach 10, you reach 25, or 50. And it that's worth crawling through glass for but it's not, it's not been a task. It's been an absolute joy. It was a joy. It's been a joy from day one. And still a joy today.

 

Tim Buxton 

Gerard, how can people learn more about your work? How can they if they were listening to this, and they're moved? And they're like, I would love to be part of this? How can they learn more? How can they be a part of what you are doing? In India?

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

Sure. If that's easy, we are on GoodShepherdHomes.org. So that's good. g, o, o, d, Shepherd, s h, e p, h, e, r d, homes, plural. GoodShepherdHomes.org. And there, you can read a little bit more about the work that we do, what we're up to what our projects are, how people can get involved, etc.

 

Tim Buxton 

Awesome. And you're you're on Facebook as well, I believe and even Instagram.

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

When people search, Good Shepherd homes, Good Shepherd homes. Pune. We're easy to find. Yeah.

 

Tim Buxton 

Well, I would encourage anybody listening, if you've got a prompt, or you've been inspired by what you've heard, definitely head over to those places. They'll be in the show notes for you to to listen to. Is there any other final remarks, Jared, anything else that you you'd like to say? Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate just sitting down delving into this issue, unpacking it as an issue, but also just hearing about just the incredible work that's happening.

 

Gerard Vandervegt  

Sure, sure. No, I would just say it's, it's always a joy to speak and catch up. Thanks for having me and looking forward to the next time.

 

Tim Buxton 

Yeah, you got it. Alrighty, gerard, thanks a lot. We'll speak again soon no doubt.

 

Tim Buxton 

Thanks for listening to this episode of justice matters. I'd like to take this time to thank my audio visual engineer, Jose Bitto for your help in producing the show. I'd also like to shout out to the Patreon community that financially supports this podcast. Guys, thank you so much for your support, you can join them simply by going to patreon.com forward slash justice matters, where simple donation of $5 a month, you can become part of the Patreon community and get access to behind the scenes content and extras that I share just with you. Lastly, there's another really important way that you can help support the podcast and that simply by writing it or leaving a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Maybe by subscribing on YouTube. Yes, we are a video podcast as well. Guys, thank you so much for listening in to this episode of justice matters. Please come again soon. Can't wait to share more episodes with you. I'm your host, Tim Buxton