Brighter Future for 4500 Orphan children in India

 Hi Freinds,

Here we are with a new report to upadate you all with our activities. As you know We work with children in need of care and protection and focus majorly on their well-being, care & protection. However, not much attention is given to the people who work with these children day in or day out. In a regular family setting, dealing with 1 child or 2 children on a daily basis can be a daunting task filled with moments of joy, frustration, excitement, dejection etc. Imagine dealing with 20-25 or even higher no. of kids bursting with energy on a daily basis in an orphanage setting - mind boggling and huge! Staff and caretakers at orphanages are such a major influence on the children and have a big impact on the way a child's future shapes up in the orphanage. Being with so many children everyday coupled with long working hours, can sometimes stress childcare workers & unfortunately children end up bearing the brunt of their stress & frustration. This can of course be detrimental and confusing to children. Therefore, it became increasingly evident that as much as we support the well-being of children in orphanages, we must work with orphanage staff too to address their concerns, stress management, provide them with ways & means of dealing with children in a positive & constructive manner and understanding children, their nature and bringing out the best in children. With this aim, CSA organized workshops for childcare workers and staff who work with children in orphanages we support. We roped in child specialists / councellors to conduct these workshops which were interactive in nature and provided for a lot of dialogue between staff and resource trainer. Various participatary activities like role play, Case studies etc. made it more interactive and participatary. Participants were handed 'Completion Certificates' at the end of the workshop. Some testimonials from
participants –

We received good response in terms of attendance and positive feedback from staff regarding the way the workshops were conducted. Here are few feedbacks from the participants.

1. "The workshop was helpful; some children get angry often & do not listen to us. We keep wondering why? But after interacting with the resource person, we understand
that child may be facing a psychological problem. Now we are planning to take the child to a psychologist and seek medical help. "

2. “The training was needed for our staff. This is the 1st time we were able to attend a session like this with regards to how to behave with children. Now we can understand some of our mistakes which we'll try to rectify going forward."

3. "Thanks to CSA for organising this training. We'll surely put to use the knowledge received at the workshop in our day to day work. "

4. "This was a wonderful session & we look forward to future workshops”

Participant's  response made us understand that we need to have such warkshops frequently, to develop child friendly attitude towards children coming from various backgraound.

Links:

• CSA news letter- Apr. 2014

This time all the CSA staff were busy forming and running of Children's committees at the children’s home CSA is associated with. Its relevance, roles & responsibilities of members – and their active participation………… Officer in Charge of every State (Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh , Maharashtra and Orissa) help to facilitate the setting up of Children's Committees to ensure involvement of children in running of the institution. The committee shall be constituted solely by children. CSA has been mobilizing childcare agencies we work with, to form Children's Committees and we have been successful in guiding children to help form these committees. The children's committees are to maintain a register for recording the activities and proceedings, and place it before the managing committee meeting every month. There are also provisions for setting up of a complaint redress mechanism in every institution and a Children's Suggestion Box – accessible to children – where children can drop their complaints in writing. The underlying purpose is to provide guidance on how to function and equip children in improving their confidence levels, engage in decision making, come up with ideas to improve conditions of the institution, develop educational, vocational & recreational plans, support each other in man aging crisis, make suggestions that would be beneficial to all the inmates. We have helped children with selecting their leaders, explained the roles & responsibilities of each member, get them to conduct periodic meetings, maintaining records and minutes of the meeting. It has been observed that on the whole, children are very receptive and have been enthusiastically participating and contributing their time, talent & ideas for various initiatives. Some of the younger children are still in the process of learning to execute their tasks as committee members but in general are quite excited! Some of the initiatives / tasks that Children's committee members have been managing at all locations, • committee members are keeping stock of hygiene kits supply and following up with their peers to ensure that they are following do's and don'ts shared during oral & personal hygiene awareness sessions In Goa and Mumbai, • 'Health & Hygiene' minister demonstrated hand washing techniques and encouraged their friends to follow In Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha, • members have been planning different recreational & cultural activities on different occasions all by themselves with little or no help either from the institute's management or CSA At one of the children’s home in Orissa Children’s committee members strogly demanded for improvement in the quality of the food they were getting. They successfully made an impact to get the better quality food. This truly is a motivation for CSA team and is an excellent means of empowering children and gaining hands on experience on various life and management skills right there at the Children’s home itself....

Links:

• CSA news letter