May 14th 2001 - A talk by Joe Homan

Joe Homan

Joe Homan is a longstanding visitor to the club.  We have supported boys in his villages by subscription for many years and Joe visits when he can to give the club an update.

Slides from Joe Homan's talk

Joe gave an excellent talk.....

In 1965, JOE HOMAN gave up his career in teaching to return to South India. Previously he had seen children living there in poverty, dying on the pavements and in bus stations.

With just £200, he borrowed half an acre of wasteland 15 miles south of Madurai, a city of a million people in the centre of Tamil Nadu state. He invited some children living at the railway station to help him build a poultry farm.

The next day, six of them stole a ride on a train to join him. They made bricks of mud and built a palm-thatched cottage. Five poultry sheds followed, and, before long a thriving farm was producing 700 eggs a day. In 1966 Joe bought 32 acres of wasteland near the town of Tirumangalam for cultivation-and started his first BOYS TOWN.

Since 1966 ten more towns have been built. Each Town villages, currently supporting the education provides a home for 85 children, most are built on farms of 30 Acres. Aged between 11 and 16, the children attend local schools and complete their High School education.  

The pupils have helped to dig their own wells, plant trees and look after the facilities.  They get up at 6am each weekday, do one hours work then swim and then go off to school.

They grow bananas plants (which grow 6 to 8 inches per day) and sunflowers which reach maturity in 60 days.  They manage water buffalos for milk and the buffalos dung is used to produce methane for cooking!

Joe explained that it is rare to see youngsters begging & wandering now.  Only individuals with less than 35p per day are admitted to the Boys Towns to ensure that the needy are placed first.  It is estimated that here are 44m 10 to 14 year olds in child labour in India.

Joe was thanked by Alan Barber after an interesting question session and Joe received strong applause from the club and our guests.

Rotary District 1140 Conference 1997

India 50, Boys Towns 32 not out - Joe Homan

Joe Homan sailed to India in 1965 with just one set of clothes £200 and a typewriter. He knew of some waste land 15 miles south of Madurai and, talking to children at the railway station he invited them to join him in setting up a poultry farm. The rest of his life is one that we have all heard so much about.

There are currently eight Boys Towns, one Girls Town and two Villages for the under twelves. All are small settlements with room for about 85 people. Each has between eight and ten individual bungalows to house these youngsters with a small farm attached mainly for training.

In 1992 Joe set up a pilot scheme to tackle the problem of youngsters caught in a Child Labour situation. The idea was to compensate the family for allowing their child to stay at school and complete a secondary education. This scheme has been adopted as an extension of Joe's work and from June 1997 18 villages will be in the scheme each giving help to 50 youngsters mainly girls. Joe's Rotary Club in India is also involved with this scheme. The target for this project is 2,000 children rescued by 2000 AD.

Shepperton Rotarian Bob Boyle with Joe Homan