April 2006Community
Our story
From 2006,
year by year.
From the first visit to the desert villages to the year the children went home. Tap any photo to see it larger.
2006
2008
2008Children
At a small orphanage in Lahore
Living with some thirty children and helping a free school attended by about ninety children from the neighbourhood. He began learning Urdu.
2010
2010Desert
From village to village in the desert
Villages with no electricity and no water. Instead of going to school, the children fetched water and firewood. If someone would feed and house them, the parents said, they would send them to school.
2011
2011Family
Two sewing classes, and a flood
Two sewing classes for women opened. In a village hit by floods, food was shared out and two brick houses were rebuilt.
2012
November 2012Desert
Meeting the children of the Cholistan Desert
Small villages scattered across a desert the size of a province. Reaching them meant a ten-hour drive.
2013
March 2013Children
Twelve children come to live with us
The children, from eight villages, did not know their birthdays and had never seen toothpaste or a toothbrush. They began living together in a house in Lahore and going to school.
November 2013Desert
Back to the children's home villages
Every visit, the whole village gathered. We ate and prayed with the children's families.
2014
September 2014Village
A chapel and a classroom rise in the tent colony
A tent colony beside the highway on the edge of Lahore. After the chapel went up, the tents turned one by one into brick houses, and more families moved in.
26 May 201329 June 20202017
February 2017Children
First place in the competition
At a competition of 150 students representing thirteen schools, a child from the desert took first place.
August 2017School
A school for sixty children who had none
A small rented house became a school. Books, supplies and uniforms are provided. Four teachers work there.
2019
2019Children
Student president of a school of nine hundred
In a school of nine hundred students, a child from the desert was elected student president.
2020
April 2020School
Classrooms above the chapel
The seventy or so children who had been studying in the chapel moved up to new classrooms. The teachers grew from three to six, and in the evenings some twenty adults who never learned to read study their letters.
August 2020Family
The first family leaves the brick kiln
A family that had worked at the kiln for seventeen years. With the debt paid and a house found, eight people began a new life.
18 August 202011 May 2021September 2020Children
Three children from the desert enter university
A leading university in Lahore that admits only the top five percent. Three of the children who did not know toothpaste on their first day were admitted.
2021
January 2021Family
Visiting the kilns every month
A full day moulding a thousand bricks earns around seven dollars. Once a month we visit the kiln, share a meal and hand out groceries and household goods.
April 2021Family
Seven families
At Easter three families left the kiln together. Among them was the head of a household of fifteen who had lived at the kiln for twenty-three years.
2022
November 2022School
A classroom for the kiln village children
A farming village with a brick kiln. Some twenty children study on the floor above the chapel.
2023
June 2023Community
Vocational training centre
Barbering, sewing, English and caregiving: skills that lead to work.
2025
2025Community
The barbering and sewing team visits the kilns every month
Young people who learned a trade go to the kilns to cut hair and sew clothes for the children.
2026
February 2026Children
The first of them goes home to the desert
One of the twelve finished his studies and went back to the desert village where he grew up. He lives there among his own people now.
2026Family
Sixteen families
So far sixteen families have left the brick kilns and live in homes of their own.
Ahead
2027Ahead
A boarding school at the desert's edge
A school and a hostel in the large village on the road into the desert. It will be led by young people who grew up in the desert and finished their studies.