In my journeys over the last three years into the orphanages, slums, clinics and streets of India I have become immersed in the lives of dozens of these invisible children, whose hope and resilience showed me the beautiful side of India even in the most difficult places. The result is my book, The Weight of Silence: Invisible Children of India. This literary nonfiction book takes the reader into the lives of children who overflow orphanages and institutional homes into the streets and railway stations, affected by trafficking, AIDS or simple poverty. They are everywhere. Some scrounge through trash for newspapers, rags or anything they can sell at traffic intersections. Others, often as young as two or three years old, beg. Many of these children are homeless, extremely vulnerable to being trafficked into child labor if they’re lucky, brothels if they’re not.

Children like Sahiful, who was rescued at age six from the backbreaking agricultural labor he had been forced into and taken to live at a boys’ home, where he was allowed to play for the first time in his life. By the age of thirteen, Sahiful had become an international award-winning filmmaker. Or a twelve- year-old boy named Yesu, living with his grandmother after his parents died of AIDS in Andhra Pradesh, the epicenter of the epidemic. Yesu went to work each day, foregoing his childhood to take care of his younger brother who bore the legacy of this senseless disease’s rampage across India – the nine-year-old orphan was HIV-positive.

Across the country near Delhi another former child laborer, Om Prakash, became an activist for destitute and vulnerable children, campaigning against trafficking and discrimination. In 2006 this extraordinary teenager was honored with the world’s most prestigious award for children – the International Children’s Peace Prize from the Nobel Prize Laureates. These children live on the precipice of disaster every day, and are largely overlooked by the world. Human rights and the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child demands that raise awareness of this shocking truth and step in to uphold the rights of millions of Indian children.

I'm Shelley Seale, a professional freelance writer and graphic designer based out of Austin, Texas and Seattle, Washington. My areas of writing specialty include cultural issues, women & children, travel, nonprofit and social activism, the arts, real estate (commercial & residential), relocation, architecture, entrepreneurship, business and interior design. I have been a regular contributing writer to the Good Life Magazine, OutFront Magazine, and the Austin Business Journal among others. My work has also been published in Austin Monthly, San Antonio Express-News, InfoChange India, Austin Woman, the Austin American-Statesman, World Press and more.

homepage http://weightofsilence.wordpress.com