Educate 100 orphan girls in rural India

Rathi is 16 years old and also affected by a chronic health condition. Her mother died very early and is living with her father, paternal grandmother and elder brother. In a gender dominated society girls are not encouraged to study and if they are affected by any chronic health condition, they are the least encouraged and it was from such condition that Rathi also was affected. She was not only neglected with physical care but also social and emotional care that affected her interest in studies. Most of the relatives and even her grandmother was against her continuing studies after she attained puberty.

She was encouraged her to look at the household work and support the grandmother. It was after the intervention of Buds of Christ in educating the father on the importance of education, providing educational support materials for Rathi and also arranging study guidance by the senior peers at the centre, she has been encouraged to continue her education. She is now currently studying 11th standard Fashion Designing and writing her public examinations, which is a crucial year for her to make decisions over her future course of studies. She has also been equipped to handle examination fears and stress by her senior peers of the support group.

Every year Buds of Christ supports around 150 rural orphan children with school bags; tuition fees, notebooks, study guides and most deserving children were supported with sets of school uniforms. Thanks to GlobalGiving for helping us reach out to the most needy orphan children like Rathi.

Brindha is from a family of three girls brought up by her widowed mother. They live in a rural village in Namakkal district. Here in this part of the district girl children are seen as a burden to the family and so when Brindha was born the third girl in the family, she was less accepted by her paternal grandparents. They made attempts of killing her as an infant. It was her mother and her family who stood against the act and rescued her from that situation.

Within few years, her father died due to ill health when Brindha was in first standard. Her mother  who had studied till high school had limited opportunities for work in rural areas and the only work she could get was working as a coolie labourer. She then joined work in a social organisation as a field worker and changed the girls to English medium from the government Tamil medium school.

Though Brindha had difficulty in adjusting from the local language to complete English medium of instruction in her subjects, she worked hard to be among the top 10 in her class. She wanted to make her mother proud for the hard efforts she has been putting towards a better education. The global giving support had helped meeting the needs of uniform, books and stationery for the academic year.

In the recently held 10^th public board exams, Brindha  had scored 495/500 and stood second highest scorer in the school. On asking what motivated her to score such makes, she had expressed that "Studying well and scoring good marks is what I think would be the only best gift, I can give in return for the sacrifices my mother have made for us”.

The Global Giving donations has been a strong support to girls under the care of widowed mothers and grandmothers to send their girls to school with new bags, note books and staionery kits. This not only motivates the caretakers, but also helps us in ending girl child marriages in this area.