By Mary Julie | Program Manager
Buds of Christ focuses it’s work on empowerment of girl children with holistic development, which includes ensuring children are in schools or colleges, equipping them with life skills, encouraging to participate in sports, arts and cultural activities.
Buds of Christ encourage girl children to complete high school and attend college. As most of them belong to poor economic household and under the care of widow mothers and grandparents; the family may need them to work to provide much-needed income and often girls in rural conditions are often the least encouraged for higher education and married early by the families.
Barathi is a successful child who has overcome all the challenges that came in her way and her pillar of support has been her mother who had BIG dreams for her daughter. Her father died due to a snake bite, when she was 10 months old and it was her mother a widow who has been managing the family. Her elder sister got married early against the family wishes, but all the challenging situation did not deter the interest Barathi had towards her future. Her mother works as a daily wageworker in the garbage cleaning contract work and has been supporting the family with the income and so her journey of completing her Masters degree in clinical nutrition has not been an easy pathway.
When we met Barathi in 2010 she was in her 7th standard and was going to school, just like any other normal child in the community. Their house did not have an electricity connection and Barathi and her elder sister used to study only on streetlights. With the intervention of Buds of Christ from there, the electricity supply was initiated within a span of two months. Barathi has been part of Buds of Christ, since then and has been supported with uniform, stationery, notebooks and the school kit every academic year. After class 12, she chose to do her studies on Bachelors in Nutrition and Dietetics and shine as class topper when she completed her degree.
In addition she was regular in attending the life skills sessions organized every weekend at the Centre. The sessions also developed her personally from a shy person to be a confident and assertive person. Through the sessions she also was able to develop a vision for herself. From then, she had an aspiration to do a course in the medical field and her dream has become a reality through the guidance and support from Buds of Christ.
In 2020, Barathi has completed her Masters in Clinical Nutrition from the Periyar University and is waiting for her results. She is also the first graduate in her family.
By Mary Julie | Program Director
By Mary Julie | Program Manager
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
