By Fred Crowe | CEO
Our work with Dalit families is progressing very well, helped by the donations which we have received via GlobalGiving. This last few months we have received significant funding.
Our child sponsorship programme is quite unique in that all children have their own bank account. It is managed by their mother. We make sure that the money is only used for the education of the children, to pay fees and uniforms and books and money left over is used for nutrition for the family.
Once a child joins our child sponsorship programme the mother also joins a mothers self-help group, and within 2 to 3 years she will benefit from getting a loan to buy a cow. She can repay this loan within two years from the sale of milk and and male calves.
The bank transfers for the child sponsorship only last about five years as at that stage the family have sufficient income so the sponsorship is transferred to another child. When the child reaches 18 we can then provide a loan for the first child to go for further education. We had found that the upfront fees ($100) was stopping many of them going on to 3rd level education. This has now changed and over 300 children have received a loan to go to college.
Our new Nandri Center for training and administration allows us to bring children for courses. For a number of months, we had hundred children coming each evening to our centre, for English language classes, help with their homework and some nutrition. We have expanded this now so we now have centres in local villages rather than the children coming to us. We have educated a number of English-speaking mothers to teach children to speak English using our methods. We call these the Nandri Joyful Learning Centres. You can see the children enjoying themselves in the video, which is attached to this report.
Our ultimate aim is the education of children. We believe we are doing this by providing assistance with school fees, also providing a source for family income, a nutrition and now we have our English language classes each evening. In January 2017. We have 200 children. We expect to grow this to 500 children by the end of 2017.
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