Our Commitment

Brand Stand directs funds from the sale of our Organic Meltdown Indian Spice chocolate bars to the Happy Children's Home, India. They are government registered under the name 'Happy Charitable Trust', India, Registration Number 74/IV/2007.

Their passion for helping children in need is our inspiration.

Story

While crafting Organic Meltdown's Indian Spice organic dark chocolate, we needed to discover the source of India's finest ingredients. While travelling through the rolling Cardamom Hills of Kerala, India, we soon discovered that even beautiful areas can have underlying social challenges that need to be addressed.
There are an estimated 18 million children in India for whom the street has become home.

These children are forced to survive on their own, often in some of the most dangerous environments in the country. Children as young as five work as low-paid vendors or porters, or scratch a living by picking over waste dumps, looking for anything to sell or eat. Many are forced into compromising situations, including prostitution.

Although some of these children have irregular contact with their families, others are completely abandoned, orphaned or are runaways. Abuse, neglect, deprivation, malnutrition, and exploitation are rampant and they have little or no access to medical care. Most become the victims of easily prevented diseases such as tuberculosis, polio and measles.

There are several outstanding groups that are fighting to turn the tide on childhood poverty in the Kerala state of India. One of the best establishments that we encountered is the Happy Children's Home which was set up in June 2005 just outside the tourist area of Kovalam, Kerala, in Southern India.

The children who live at the Happy Children's Home are given the spirit of a family environment and we help with the physical, mental, emotional and social development of the children, while nurturing individual growth and promoting community values.

The aim is to help these underprivileged children attain economic independence as they approach adulthood and to provide them with the means for a positive integration into society with a sense of dignity and self-worth, belonging, and a desire to continue serving their communities.

Since opening in 2005, the Happy Children's home has become home to many children between the ages of six and fifteen, all from various backgrounds but each with one thing in common: without the home's support, they very well would be living on the street.

The Happy Children's Home has big plans and we aim to help them. Because space is limited in the home, they have established a long-term expansion program to grow their home and thus bring more children into the organization on a full-time basis.

For other abandoned children in their region, they are also planning a broader outreach project to help other children who don't live at the home by providing a weekly drop-in centre where young children can come to get a meal, some basic medical care, a bath and some academic help.

Finally, they are beginning to address the need for similar services in the wider area, including in urban areas where services for these children are scarce.

Please click on this link to see photos of the children and read their real stories!
www.cid-0142b7d5aa8874a4.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/Children?ref=1

Poetry of a Street Child

You don't know my city or the dusty streets where I live
You don't know my name; you don't know ME.

You have your own troubles, your OWN world - why should I be in it?
Your world is school and homework; TV and music; shopping and friends
You are concerned about your grades, your weight and you're Mum nagging you to clean up your bedroom
And will she buy those designer jeans you must have for the Party on Saturday night.
You are looking forward to your holiday in America and leaving school to get that job you've always wanted.

My world is hard, unloving, unfair ...worse
I don't have any designer jeans, just this one, dirty, threadbare clothes
I have never been to school; I've never read a book
I have no Mum to nag me, or care for me - she died three years ago
I have no bedroom to keep tidy, because I have no home.

I'm concerned about where I will sleep tonight - will the Policeman wake me up, beat me up, and lock me up, worse...?
I'm concerned about my aching, empty stomach
I'm not well - I have a disease I can't spell and no medicine to treat it
I have nothing to look forward to...
Except an early, lonely death from a disease my underfed body could not resist.

They call me beggar, thief, worse...
They look at me with hate in their eyes, then chase me away - what have I done?!
You see my picture in your newspaper and on your TV screen, but you turn away
You don't see ME!

I AM in your world - OUR world.
I am also aboard spaceship earth, but you are a rich passenger and I am a poor one
You CAN understand my world: ask questions, find answers, find ME!
Will you try? It might help you make sense of your own world.

What's my name?
MY name is Street Child of India.