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