Back to school program for 150 poor children

By K.R.RAJU - PROJECT DIRECTOR

Final Report: VDC started this 10 Child Learning Centres – CLC in September 2019 and completed in August 2020 in Manachanallur block villages, Tiruchirappalli District. During the COVID 19 period, we are unable to conduct the Child Learning Centres (CLCs) for few months. But our local volunteers are visited the door steps of the students and encourage them in study and to keep their health on covid 19 period. We also educated them on how to prevent the covid 19. The state Government decided to open the schools soon. Due to the part of panchayat raj elections the government relaxed the lock down and will continue again after 25 of February 2022. We have fear on third wave of covid 19. Students are attending the online classes only. It is happy to say that the admission in government schools has increased more than 20% due to some provisions for the students of Government Schools. Many students don’t have mobiles for their education and they are forced to get money from the moneylenders for purchase of mobiles for education purpose. The first two waves devasted the livelihood of the people and make them debt bondage. Many shifted to alternative jobs at locally and some established own small business at their villages. In our project average 15 people are affected by covid 19 in each village. Our volunteers are paying visits to the homes of the villages and guide them to continue their children education. We are forced to change our goal post from education to awareness building on health and relief activities on prevention of COVID-19. We created awareness on the importance of using face mask, hand wash, social distancing and importance of using sanitizers. VDC provided 1000 three-layer fabric masks prepared by our experienced women tailors of our women Self Help Groups (SHGs) at free of cost. VDC also collected donations in cash and in-kind and distributed rice, groceries, and vegetables to the families of our target children families. We are continuing the mobile counselling for students and their parents. VDC advised the parents to provide nutrient food to improve their immune system of children during their stay at home and make the children enjoy the family life with their family members. Due to continuous lockdown, still people are not turned to normal life. Yet we are not received the grant from GlobalGiving due to some valid reasons and so we have pending honorarium and rent for the schools. Once we get the grant from GlobalGiving we will paid the same. On this critical situation, VDC once again expresses its gratitude to the donors who contributed a lot to make our program objectives to get materialized.