Do you know how many children are in slavery in India today?

GNI is a home for high risk girls and hurting children. Tragically, some 80% of the girls that “work” in the brothels of India are forcibly brought down from the Northern hills of India, some as young as five years old.

Good News India is committed to our children for the long haul. We intend to see them through High School and College. Many of our kids sense the call of God upon their lives for full-time ministerial work. Until we operate our own Bible training School, we will send them to nearby Evangelical Bible Colleges, but we are well aware that often times pioneering work calls for bi-vocational talents.

India has the world’s 12th largest economy—and third largest in Asia—with a gross national income of $1 trillion. It has become one of the world’s fastest growing economies, with an average growth rate of eight percent over the past three years. Despite the upswing in economic gains, the growth has been uneven among ethnic groups and geographic regions. Most instances of poverty exist in rural areas, where 71 percent of the population lives. More than 80 percent (or 700 million Indians) live on less than $2 a day.

Half of the world’s hungry live in India. According to World Food Program, around 35 percent of the population is considered food insecure, consuming less than 80 percent of minimum daily caloric requirements. Furthermore, approximately 78 percent of Indians living in the countryside do not have access to adequate sanitation facilities. As a result, diarrhea is prevalent and is the second leading cause of death among children. In addition, anemia affects most pregnant women, leading to stunted growth for 48 percent of children under the age of five. While the prevalence rate for HIV and AIDS is not high in India, there are still 2.5 million people are living with the disease.

India supports more than 15 percent of the world’s people and has over 2,000 ethnic groups. Nearly three-quarters of the population are Indo-Aryan, a mixture of indigenous and either European or Iranian ancestry. The Dravidians, who make up 25 percent of India’s inhabitants, live primarily in the central and southern regions of the country. Hindi is the national language and is spoken by 337 million people. Other official languages include Bengali, Kashmiri, Punjabi, and Urdu. English enjoys an associate language status and is used mostly in political and commercial communication.

The Hindu culture developed on the subcontinent of India under the Gupta Dynasty in the fifth century A.D. Over the next 700 years, Islam slowly spread across the region, blending with Hindu traditions. By the 1850s, the British opened several trading posts along the west coast and took control of most of India. Beginning in 1920, Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi led a mass movement against British rule, using nonviolent resistance and non-cooperation to push for independence.