Today, I was visiting a shelter for boys – some of them are orphans, others had abusive parents. I was expecting fairly miserable conditions, and that was exactly what I found. 31 little creatures and a handful of teachers living in a two storey bungalow with no garden or playground. Iron furniture – double-deck beds and chest-high closets – cramming their tiny rooms. There’s not enough of even this basic iron furniture – since not every boy has a bed, they tend to pile up their mattresses in the middle of the room and sleep all together, hugging each other like little kittens.

I was lucky to visit the shelter during school holidays, so I got to meet most of the boys. They are truly wonderful creatures – curious, friendly and lively. They are flocking around a table with colourful books, curious about animals, places, Apache Indians and ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, for some of the boys, these colourful books are the only education they will ever receive. There are 5 boys in the shelter, whose parents forgot or lost their birth certificates, the kids were condemned “stateless” and now, no school will accept them for studies.

While we are flipping through the bright pages of children’s encyclopedia, Jeroen – a young volunteer teacher from the Netherlands – is telling me snippets from the life of the shelter. What really amazes and puzzles me, is that the shelter runs completely on voluntary donations – the state doesn’t pay a penny to the shelter. There are 2 Chinese kids in the shelter, the rest are Tamil boys. The shelter is not allowed to take on Malay kids, because they cannot provide Halal food and they don’t have prayer rooms. The shelter does not comply with these demands because Halal food is more expensive and there is not enough space as it is to accommodate an extra prayer room . Yet, since there are no Malay kids, there is no government support. Kind of a vicious circle.

On my way back home, it is not the scars on the little bodies, nor the skinny arms and short cropped hair, nor the 5 boys who cannot go to school that hover on my mind, it is the sticky thought that the state refuses to help the shelter. I cannot believe that there may be a reason enough to decide that one shelter might not deserve to be supported. Selective welfare is like someone, trying to decide that you are less miserable than another, or you are miserable all right, but you are not important enough to be helped. When I think of those little boys, I cannot imagine who would dare to judge that they should be left to the mercy of voluntary donations.