Varanasi is a holy city for Hindus much like Mecca is to Muslims. For a few Americans a short, simple everyday rickshaw ride through the city was enough to exhaust the senses. The sights, sounds and smells were pretty shocking at first. Going from our hotel to get a quick meal not more than a half mile away we would see countless beggars (many of whom didn’t have all four limbs), some just a few years old pleading for anything, or a family “bathing” in the gutter. The smell of trash that lines the streets and human and animal waste causes one to savor a breath of relatively fresh air. The rickshaw driver must constantly weave around people, some passed out and hopefully still alive, and some of the thousands of cows in the city that sit in the middle of the road as they seem to understand they are considered holy and would not move for a bus. 
It seems that life in Varanasi revolves around the Ganges River. Although the Ganges is considered holy and can cleanse the soul, it is filled with industrial waste and raw sewage making it one of the most polluted rivers in the world. On a morning boat ride we watched people lining the banks of the Ganges washing their bodies, clothes, or soul and cremating their dead. The fire that you see in the second picture is actually a cremation fire. 
This is Philip and Gabriela Gibson and Ravinder. The Gibsons and Ravinder have started programs for kids living at the train station and other underprivileged children from the community. These programs include after school tutoring, Bible teaching, food, games and sports, and simply giving the kids a safe environment to escape life on the street and be a kid.
A visit to the train station with Ravinder was quite an eye opener to how harsh life can be – especially for young kids. Many orphans and runaways end up living at train stations selling pencils or newspapers, sweeping the train cars, and collecting bottles and cans from the trains or on the tracks. With the few pennies they earn, many kids buy glue to dull the hopelessness of their young lives. When the kids get high on glue they pass out, sometimes on the train tracks. As it is not worth stopping the train for a street kid, many children have lost limbs or lives. The trains are not equipped with tanks for human waste so the tracks at the stations are literally covered in feces and trash. It made my stomach turn watching children walk along the feces covered tracks to collect bottles and cans. 
We were able to spend a couple days with Ravinder and the train station boys. It’s heartbreaking to see these kids robbed of their childhood as they try to live by begging from train passengers. But it is inspiring to see how the Gibsons and Ravinder are giving these boys hope and a chance for a healthy future. With help from the Gibsons and Ravinder, some of the older train station boys have found jobs and a room to rent giving hope to and showing the younger boys that there is a way out.
We also had the chance to spend a day at Mother Teresa’s Varanasi orphanage. It was an honor to be able to meet and spend time with the nuns who have dedicated their lives to God through serving the poor, sick, and orphaned.
Here’s what Jeffrey has to say about his experience in Varanasi:
The poorest children in America would be considered rich in Varanasi, India. Having clean clothes, food served at mealtimes, and parents who care for them are foreign to the kids who live at the train stations and on the streets. Things that are considered necessities in the United States are things that the street kids have only dreamt of having. We went to visit the train station, where some of the street kids live, running from cops, sniffing White-Out and chewing glue. I felt strange when one of the kids started staring at my shoes, his bare feet had scabs, cuts, and were very dirty, and it made me feel very sorry for him, that he, only my age or younger was by luck left on the street. It makes me feel grateful in a way that makes me not want to have pride, but to try and help, because it could have been me who was born there and not him. I have always been told that I am very blessed to have parents who love me and take care of me. I also have seen pictures and heard stories of starving kids in poverty in other countries, but I felt like they were not any part of my life, and I somehow never really cared. Now, coming and seeing it firsthand has changed me, seeing both sides of the world, the mansions in America and the cardboard shacks in India.-David and Jeff
