THE TRASH HEAP KIDS

As the tourists leave the bars and clubs of the busy holiday resort at 3am, a small shape darts in and out of the shadows. She is barefoot and dressed in dirty rags. Her name is Adama and she is just six years old. With a grubby sack in one hand, she begins picking up the empty beer and water bottles that litter the dusty road in Goa, somehow avoiding tearing her feet open on the shards of broken glass.

She will spend most of the night clearing this section of road. At dawn she will drag the sack of rubbish to the local recycling plant. There she'll be paid just four or five pence for her night's work.

Adama is an orphan and will use her wages to buy a small bag of rice and a banana, before she heads 'home' - a dirty blanket among piles of rubbish at the local dump.

There she huddles next to the other homeless children, somehow managing to sleep in the heat of the sun as rats run over her. Once night falls, she'll do it all over again.

Jemma plays with one of the rescued children

Adama has lived this way for six months, after her mother - a street prostitute - died of a drugs overdose. She has no other known family. She is one of thousands of street children managing to stay alive on the streets of Goa, India. Left to fend for herself, she did what the other kids do - headed to the town dump, a makeshift orphanage for children with no one to look after them.

While tourists sunbathe just yards away on Goa's famous white beaches, or relax around the plush pools of its five-star hotels, these children raid the restaurant bins for scraps of food and scavenge rubbish for anything of value they can find. Many are beaten and abused - countless numbers die. No one acknowledges their existence, so their deaths go unnoticed, too.

While the locals consider them a blight on the tourist industry, tarnishing the paradise image of the area, UK-based charity El Shaddai hopes to rescue as many of these children as it can.

Every day volunteers search the dump sites and railway stations, looking for homeless children in need of a safe place to stay in the charity's four residential homes.

Once in the charity's care, they're housed, fed, educated and, most importantly, shown the love and affection most have never experienced.

One of the charity's volunteers is air stewardess Jemma Selves. Every year she spends a month in India working to help these forgotten children.

Her extraordinary commitment was sparked on a holiday to Goa in 2000. "I expected to see a lot of poverty, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of the slums and the kids running round in rags with no one to care for them," she remembers.

"One day at a market, I met an English nurse called Anita, who was handing out flyers about the charity El Shaddai and the work it does with the street children. I was so moved, I promised I would come back one day as a volunteer.

"For the next few years, I never forgot about those children. I kept the flyer Anita gave me and in November 2005, I took unpaid leave and flew out to help."

Jemma, 31, from Maidstone, Kent, spent six weeks caring for the children, ranging from newborn babies to teenagers. She was so overwhelmed, she vowed to return as often as she could - a promise she's faithfully kept.

"I do everything from bathing the toddlers to playing cricket with the boys and helping the older ones with their homework," says Jemma.

"Before I went out there, I worried whether I would be any use, but I soon realised that just spending time with these children and showing them love is so valuable."

Jemma and the boys check out the donated toys

Jemma also fund-raises for the charity and has collected £5,000, which helped build a new classroom.

Some of the children are orphans, some have run away from abusive homes and others are forced by their parents to beg for money from wealthy Westerners.

The locals call them "the untouchables" and as most of them were not registered at birth, in the eyes of the State they don't exist, so they have no access to health and social care.

Their only support comes from charities such as El Shaddai, which runs homes and schools for the children with the help of British volunteers like Jemma.

El Shaddai was founded in 1996 by Anita Edgar, a nurse from Devon, who was horrified when she saw children living on the wasteland behind her holiday hotel.

She got together with local Goan pastor Matthew Kurian and founded the charity. Anita now spends half the year in Goa and the rest travelling to raise more funds to keep the charity going.

"El Shaddai is literally a lifeline for these children," Jemma says. "Without it, thousands more would be dead or condemned to a life of abuse."

Like in the movie Slumdog Millionaire, many of the children Jemma's met have been deliberately injured to increase their begging potential.

"Boiling oil is poured into their eyes to blind them, or their skin is burnt with cigarettes and their fingernails are pulled out," she says. "On one of my trips a little boy called Kuma was brought in by charity fieldworkers. He was about seven and walked with a severe limp. It turned out his dad had deliberately broken his legs so he'd get more money begging from tourists.

"Kuma spent two months being cared for by the charity and was due to have an operation on his legs. But the night before, he was snatched by his father. Recently he was spotted on the beach, crawling on all fours like a crab. His legs and arms were so badly broken he couldn't walk, he was dirty and wearing tattered clothes.

"When he saw the El Shaddai worker he scuttled away, too frightened no doubt of the repercussions from his dad. Knowing he's out there being abused breaks my heart."

Maxie shares a cuddle with the children

Another volunteer, Maxie Erangey, a 22-year-old parent support worker from Devon, has been helping the street kids for two years. But the horrors still shock her.

"I was worried about how I'd deal with the level of poverty I knew I'd find. When I first saw the kids begging it really upset me," she says.

"On my last visit I met a little boy called Jaywan. He was six and had severe brain damage from being kicked by his alcoholic father, who had abandoned him in the street. He couldn't talk, he just rocked. He was painfully thin and covered in scars.

"At first he was very mistrustful of strangers. I spent time with him, until one day, he picked up a little plastic ball and rolled it to me, then crawled over and hugged me. I cried at gaining the trust of this boy who had suffered so much but still knew how to show love."

On her first visit, Maxie spent six weeks working in the nursery. A year later, in July 2008, she went back to Goa. This time she was out in the slums helping the street kids.

"I saw children as young as five cooking on fires built from rubbish and young girls cradling their baby siblings. Some were blind or had polio with no access to medical care," says Maxie. "Many were dressed in rags and had open wounds from being beaten.

"When they are first brought to El Shaddai's residential centres they can be very withdrawn and nervous - but it's amazing how much they improve after just a few weeks."

At the end of a day of lessons and an afternoon swim at the local beach, the children of El Shaddai settle down for a dinner of lentil dhal and Goan bread - and tonight there's an extra child joining them at the table.

Adama is safe at last

Little Adama was found by a fieldworker the night before and brought in. She's had a bath and is wearing clean clothes. As she giggles with the other children and tucks into her dinner, for the first time in her life she has the chance of a safe future.

As far as Jemma's concerned, she feels lucky to be able to help, and she's planned her next trip later this month.

"My lifestyle goes from one extreme to the other - and it has made me question why I do my job. But it does allow me the free time and money to travel to India more often," she says.

"Once you get to know the children, you can't turn your back on them. They're part of my life now."

STREET KIDS - THE FACTS

• India is home to the world's largest population of street children - approximately 11 million, according to UNICEF.

• El Shaddai currently has more than 2,000 children in its care, in Goa and across India.

• The charity runs homes, schools and shelters and also provides educational and medical support for children.

• To find out more about the charity, go to Childrescue.net.

PHOTOGRAPHY: BARCROFT MEDIA

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