Transform lives of 85 child laborers in India

22 February 2015

Dear Respected Donors,

Greetings to you from Health Education Adoption Rehabilitation Development Society (HEARDS) – India!

All the donors of Global Giving have been kind enough to support the child labour rehabilitation center project for the fourth consecutive year. As part of the project, funds have been provided for meeting teacher’s salary, centers running cost, for purchase of books and stationary for children, for organizing some events for children and for meeting the project related overheads.

Children’s progress  

We are extremely happy to share with everyone that over the years there has been stability among children and the dropout rate has reduced to minimum. Children are moving to next grades and their performance has been improving. The parents are also extremely cooperative and do not withhold children at home unless there is any urgent need. All this is being made possible by the untiring effort of the teachers. The teachers provide all kinds of support to children and that is one reason why parents have no hesitation in sending their children, especially girls, to the centre. Some of the girls who have moved to senior classes, still continue to come to our centres. Also there are a few girls who come only to our centres as they are over-aged for a particular grade in formal school. We encourage these girls to continue to come to our centres and learn as much as they can so that these girls will have functional literacy. 

ENTHUSIASTIC ANIMATORS AND TEACHERS

After a long struggle with the animators and teachers, we were able to have a stable team of staff. All the staff was equally good and regular in the rehabilitation centre. Another credible thing about the animators and the teachers is that they take very less leaves and always inform in advance in case they need to take a day off. And, as and when they go out for leave we mutually make arrangements for replacement teacher so that the centre remains open and children can come. The teachers are learning from their day to day interaction with children and are improving themselves. Children love to come to the centre and have been regular in their attendance.

MEDICAL CHECKUP FOR CHILDREN

On 8 December, 2014 Tamilnadu based dairy by named Arogya milk has organized a medical checkup camp in our child labor rehabilitation centre.  The Arogya milk organisers prepared a health check up form and sent it to the doctors who visited our rehabilitation centers.  These forms were used for recording the height, weight, and other general condition of the children. The centre teachers filled up the background information about each child in advance on these forms and this made it easy for Doctors to interact with each child when his/her turn came.  All our rehabilitation centre children attended the health camp and benefited from the camp. Our centre teachers had done class discussion with the children to encourage them not to miss the school on the day of the camp and that they should take the oral medicine for de-worming.   Beyond that they have also distributed gifts to all our children.  The highlight of the check-up was that a few mothers were also present at the time of the check up to discuss any specific health issue concerning the child. The consulting Doctors provided appropriate guidance to mothers.

SPOKEN ENGLISH COACHING CLASSES

All the students and teachers started to learn spoken English.  A need-based approach is practised for this learning. That is, all those who wish to learn to speak English are taught the spoken skills, and all those who wish to read and write and pursue higher studies in English are taught to list out the details of this learning, and then to learn them using appropriate methods.  Teachers and children started to use basic sentence structure Method.  They also use a 400 hours Intensive English Course developed by CIEFL (Central Institute of English as Foreign Language) of Hyderabad.

CONCLUSION

Towards the end of the school day physical exercises, meditation and indoor games activities take place.  Thus learning occurs in the centre in an integral manner involving not only the mental level but the vital, physical and psychic parts of the being.  We are extremely thankful to all the donors for your continuous support towards this inevitable program.

                                                                                                      Mr. K Sajan

                                                                                              (Chairman – HEARDS)

Dear Esteemed supporters and Friends,

Greetings to you from Health Education Adoption Rehabilitation Development Society (HEARDS)!

With all your valuable support and guidance the rehabilitation centre is going on with all happiness and the children are doing well in our rehabilitation centre.  We are very much thankful to all our generous donors who have spent their valuable time and money and coordinated everything for our children with their months and years of hard work. The result is, children are very happy and they are in our rehabilitation centre now, enjoying their time with their learning process and also growing each day with the skills needed for their life.

We have been able to continue this valuable mission with the generous help extended to us.  The major achievement of this project is that importance of education has been well understood by the children and their parents which is evident in sending their children promptly to the rehabilitation centre and in discussing the progress of their children in studies with the teachers.

We give a brief description of the various activities carried out during the past academic year.

INCENTIVES

All the children who were enrolled in our centre were provided with 2 sets of school uniform along with that the education materials like note books, slates, pens, pencils, drawing books, time table books etc. for the children.  We were also provided school bags for the children to carry their educational material.  They were also provided with sports materials like carom, chess, ring, skipping ropes etc.

PROVIDING EDUCATION

Education plays a vital role as this was the major task of our staff with a broad view of making our children to equalize their educational standards with the regular school going children.  With the painstaking effort of our staff we were able to achieve our goal of bring back the children’s educational standard to the level of regular school going children.  All our staff has paid a lot of effort in bringing out the academic excellence of our children.  For this we have adopted several methodologies like seeing and understanding strategy, listening and understanding strategy, grouping of children according to their educational standards, systematic combined study, day-to-day review of the lessons have made the children increased interest in their studies.

COMPUTER TRAINING

During the earlier days of the project this computer serves as a primary component to initiate interest among the children in their studies.  So we provide computer games during the initial stages of the project.  Slowly they get more interest in sitting in front of computers and once they are interested we used to provide computer based tutorials in English and Mathematics.  Computers have become an easy learning component for children.  Most of the children in our centre learnt English and mathematics through computers.  This is an essential tool to make children interest in studies as well as serves as a easy teaching methodology among children.

MID-DAY MEAL PROGRAMME

Children at our Rehabilitation Centre receive free, daily lunches, prepared by our employed cook in the rehabilitation centre. Children are provided with nutritious food like boiled rice with vegetables, dhal and pulses.  Once in a week they were also provided with eggs.  During the evening hours they were provided with biscuits.  . Children at our rehabilitation centre look healthy and active throughout the year. 

AWARENESS PROGRAMS

Conducted awareness generation programs on elimination of child labor through meetings for women groups, youth groups and school going children.  We also have distributed leaflets and pasted posters in order to sensitize, and plan for the activities to be conducted for the Automobile Workshop, Hotel industry, Construction Industry, factories, Shops and Establishments with the motto of “Stop Child labour”.

CONCLUSION

With the activities as explained during this reporting period was an eventful period concerning the promotion and protection of child rights and providing quality education to the poor and downtrodden children.  We are extremely happy as these poor children gets good education and moral support.  All the Staff of HEARDS has put their painstaking effort and commitment for the growth of the rehabilitation center.  And also this project reduces Child labor, Child delinquency and improves the knowledge, skill and potentialities and become useful future citizens of the nation.